Sociology in Argentina: A Long-Term Account (Sociology Transformed) 3030635198, 9783030635190

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SOCIOLOGY TRANSFORMED SERIES EDITORS: JOHN HOLMWOOD · STEPHEN TURNER

Sociology in Argentina A Long-Term Account Juan Pedro Blois

Sociology Transformed

Series Editors John Holmwood School of Sociology and Social Policy University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK Stephen Turner Department of Philosophy University of South Florida Tampa, FL, USA

The field of sociology has changed rapidly over the last few decades. Sociology Transformed seeks to map these changes on a country by country basis and to contribute to the discussion of the future of the subject. The series is concerned not only with the traditional centres of the discipline, but with its many variant forms across the globe. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14477

Juan Pedro Blois

Sociology in Argentina A Long-Term Account

Juan Pedro Blois National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) - National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS) Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sociology Transformed ISBN 978-3-030-63519-0    ISBN 978-3-030-63520-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern adapted from an Indian cotton print produced in the 19th century This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

I especially thank Stephen Turner for his careful reading and language revision of the manuscript, and for his generous welcome at the University of South Florida where the project of this book was conceived some time ago. I would also like to thank friends and colleagues: Mariana Gené for thorough reading, Mariana Heredia and Ignacio Mazzola for discussing some parts of the manuscript, and Belén Serred for her good mood. My gratitude also goes to my parents and family for their permanent support. Finally, especial thanks to Ana Beraldo for her warm and loving company which made everything easier.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 The “Modernization” of the Social Sciences: Gino Germani and Sociology as a Science (1955–1966) 19 3 Expansion, Politicization, and the Emergence of a “National Sociology” (1966–1974) 45 4 Authoritarianism, Censorship, and the Retreat of Sociology (1974–1983) 69 5 The Restoration of Democracy and the Recovery of Sociology (1983–1989) 91 6 Academic Professionalization and the Making of Sociology as a Consultant Profession (1989 to the Present)113 7 Concluding Remarks: The Specter of Sisyphus139 Index151 vii

1 Introduction

Abstract  The history presented here offers a comprehensive account of the emergence and development of sociology in Argentina, both as an academic discipline and as a consultant profession since the 1950s. Much influenced by the country’s broader political and economic instability, but also by conflicts between sociologists with sharply different ideas and ideological backgrounds, the trajectory of sociology has been very troubled. Instability was such that the image of a “southern Sisyphus” was frequently invoked. While the definitive reestablishment of democracy in the mid-1980s paved the way for a more cumulative development, difficulties remained, as economic and political crises persisted within the country. Yet, despite this uneasy history, the sociological imagination did not perish. Although peripheral in global terms, Argentinean sociology is recognized as a central reference for Latin American scholars and many important notions, such as “populism”, “social marginality”, and “dependency”, are, if not exclusively, associated with an Argentinean name. Keywords  Institutionalization/de-institutionalization • Intellectual peripherality • Politicization • Consultant profession • Students

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_1

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A Southern Sisyphus During the twentieth century, Argentina experienced significant political turmoil. Between 1930 and 1976, there were six military coups. Consequently, democratic periods alternated with military rule and restricted democracy in a disorderly way. In 1983, democracy was permanently reestablished albeit not without major crises. In the last ten days of 2001 Argentina counted five different presidents in the context of a profound national crisis, which, according to many observers, put the country at the verge of dissolution. Throughout all that period, severe economic difficulties were continuous. Inflation and hyperinflation, stagnation, unemployment, along with repeated public debt defaults, combined with short phases of stability and (sometimes frenetic) growth. Economic difficulties were such that it is not unusual for economists in Argentina and elsewhere to picture local economy as an enigma or riddle. How could an economy which was ranked among the ten richest in the world during the first half of the twentieth century do so badly as to reduce more than 40% of its population to income poverty, according to the latest survey? Such an outcome was not the result of the government’s apathy or lack of audacity. Measures were often extreme. To be sure, the pendulum followed regional tendencies, but it did so in a much more radical fashion. Thus, it was possible for Argentina to successively be the most advanced welfare state in Latin America (and with an income distribution similar to developed countries) in the 1950s, the cruelest dictatorship in the 1970s (which killed more than 30,000 people), and take a neoliberal turn in the 1990s whose radicalness was only comparable to the shock policies that followed the crises of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Not surprisingly, sociology in Argentina was not preserved from such a changing and unsteady scenario. Far from it, its trajectory has been very troubled, including violent ruptures and marked reorientations. Secular political and institutional instability greatly affected the intellectual and academic fields in which sociologists moved. Successive governments, democratic and authoritarian, promoted very different educational and scientific policies, radically altering the resource base from which

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members of the discipline could draw: numbers of students, funding for research, teaching and research posts, level of wages, among others factors, dramatically fluctuated. This instability was accompanied by intense conflicts within those who were trying to make a living as sociologists. Constant and heated debate dividing practitioners with sharply different ideas (about what sociology ought to be) were continuous. Struggles between different factions were often bitter. Together, these factors led to a turbulent series of phases in which intellectual preferences, styles of work, professional activities, publics and audiences addressed, as well as the very meaning of sociology, were very different. In that context, many of the institutional settings or channels that were launched to promote sociology (schools, research centers, professional associations, journals, etc.) had a brief, even fleeting existence, so much as so that the image of a “southern Sisyphus” (Vessuri 1990) has frequently been invoked to think of Argentine social science’s fate. Certainly, this is clear for the period before 1983 when military governments alternated with democratic or semi-democratic governments. But things were not totally different for the years that followed. Although political stability allowed for an unprecedented routinization of practices in teaching and research, and the development of sociology undeniably gained in stability, there were important difficulties. During the 1980s and 1990s economic crises and frequent reductions in budget were serious hindrances for those interested in pursuing a career in the professoriate. What is more, the significant expansion of public investment in education and science that started in the 2000s, which included substantial strengthening of research capacities and the multiplication of under and graduate programs, has been recently menaced by changes in science policy sponsored by a neoliberal government elected in 2015. The new administration cut funding and tried to prioritize applied research. Apparently, it also encouraged campaigns in the press and social media against the social sciences and humanities and their allegedly “useless” nature (Piovani 2019). Hence, in such a context like the Argentinean, an analysis of institutionalization needs to go hand in hand with its counterpart, de-institutionalization: “the disappearance or weakening of assets or resources necessary for further institutionalization in terms of

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professional jobs, funding, journals, curricula, public esteem” (Fleck et al. 2018, p. 15). And yet, despite this troubled history, sociological imagination did not perish. Though peripheral in global terms, Argentinean sociology is unanimously recognized as a central reference for Latin American scholars. Gino Germani, an Italian émigré that made his career as sociologist in Buenos Aires, is perhaps the most renowned. His ideas and studies on authoritarianism, political regimes, and social mobility have remained up to today as unavoidable references in their fields. But the list is longer, and many of the most original notions forged in Latin American, like “populism”, “social marginality”, “center-periphery”, and “dependency”, are associated, if not exclusively, with an Argentinean name. Still, sociologists’ opportunities for doing research and producing new ideas and concepts, communicating with colleagues abroad, as well as their capacity of influencing local society, and getting support from different publics, were strongly influenced by such a zigzagging history. In this context, based on a detailed historical investigation, this book seeks to analyze the main turning points in the process of emergence and development—and frequent crises—of sociology in Argentina since the mid-twentieth century.

A Long-Term and Relational Perspective In accordance with this troubled scenario, most of the research conducted on the history of sociology in Argentina has been fragmented. In effect, scholars have generally focused on one phase or major figure (such as Gino Germani), comprising in their analyses short periods (of no more than five or six years) and studying them in relative isolation (i.e., the “foundational” sociology in the fifties, the “politicized” sociology in the sixties, etc.). In that way, scholarship has somewhat mirrored its history.1 Unlike those approaches, this book takes a broader outlook aimed at systematically studying the long-term constitution of sociology in Argentina. By focusing on the ruptures but also on the least visible—and  Partial exceptions, which engaged in longer-term accounts, are short interventions by Murmis (2005), Kreimer and Blanco (2008), and Pereyra (2010). 1

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yet pervasive—continuities, this approach addresses a significant lacuna in the studies about sociology in Argentina. Thanks to its broader scope, it tries to shed new light on the standard—and somehow partial or “segmented”—interpretations of that history while uncovering historical patterns and connections that would otherwise remain hidden. In this sense, this book aims to show how, even when sociologists seemed to be making a fresh start and rejecting previous experience, the weight of the past was an active force shaping their ideas and projects as well as their material possibilities to carry them out. The past was inherited in institutional settings and available resources, but also in the sociologists’ preferences and attitudes, as much as in their ideas on what sociology ought to be. Activities in the universities and research centers will be my primary concern, as well as its changes in intellectual worries and agendas throughout time. Sociologists’ attitudes toward the ideas diffused from the global centers vis-à-vis national intellectual traditions—that is, the dilemmas and constraints of doing sociology from the periphery—will also be addressed, along with the main controversies over the relationship between sociology and politics, something of particular importance in the Argentinean politicized intellectual milieu. These topics will be supplemented with close attention to the process of professional differentiation and the expansion of sociologists’ activities outside academia. In effect, in contrast to most common accounts of the history of sociology in different countries, the book is centered not only on the analysis of sociology as an academic discipline but also on its constitution as a consulting profession. By drawing attention to the sociologists working in state agencies, private corporations, polling agencies, and NGOs, this approach is intended to highlight the ways sociological knowledge is legitimated, demanded, produced, and used by diverse social actors and institutions. These kinds of postgraduate practices play just as important a part in the making of sociology in a given society as the academic activities do. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s approach as a “sensitizing framework” (Heilbron 2015), sociology will be analyzed as a changing and dynamic “battlefield” integrated by all those who, in different moments and from

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different perspectives, appropriated the identity of “sociologist”.2 Those agents, whether they were in the professoriate or outside the academia, took part in a struggle for the legitimation of different ideas of the discipline and over the classification of different styles of work, skills, and knowledge. In this view, the positions (and position-takings) of individual practitioners or a given faction cannot be understood without considering the positions (and position-takings) of the others, whether they were actual, concurrent agents; or past orientations in the discipline with which certain actors wanted to break. Disputes over the boundaries of sociology (Gieryn 1983), over its mission and nature, will be of paramount importance, as consensus and agreements were not broad or permanent. Also, inasmuch as those disputes were frequently joined by influential intellectuals pertaining to other intellectual endeavors, who were alternatively interested in validating or discrediting sociology, they will be included in my study.

 ontexts and Publics: The Transnational, C the Political, and the Consultant Job Market Of course, the battlefield we aim to study was not isolated from the broader context. Far from that, the orientations and preferences of sociologists, as much as their professional opportunities, depended to a great degree on “exogenous” factors. Those factors fostered some practices and views, while deterred, and even blocked, others. We will pay special attention to three of them: (1) the international evolution of sociology and the relationship with foreign scientific and philanthropic institutions; (2) the structure and dynamics of the local academic and research system, which in Argentina was closely connected to the more general political situation; and (3) the sociologists’ labor market and sociology as a consultant profession. All of these factors contributed in different and changing  Including individuals who believed themselves to be (or were believed by others to be) “sociologists” allows me to address my subject without taking an a priori assumption about what was one of the major stakes in the “game”: who should be recognized as a legitimate practitioner and who should not. 2

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ways to the material and symbolic resource base (Turner and Turner 1990) sociologists could draw from in different moments and, as such, to the strengthening or weakening of the discipline.

Transnational Influence In Argentina, as elsewhere, the making of sociological knowledge was not isolated from the processes of circulation of ideas and individuals across national boundaries (Heilbron et  al. 2008). Although in different moments there were factions promoting a “national” sociology that contested “intellectual dependency” (Alatas 2003; Beigel 2013), the global centers of the discipline remained as a permanent source of inspiration.3 The centers toward which attention was paid (France, Germany, and the United States) varied throughout time in accordance with the ecological shifts in the world academic system. Yet, in general, they coexisted. What is more, their sway was frequently counterbalanced by the powerful—yet unstable—regional Latin American intellectual circuit whose centers, successively located in Chile, Mexico, and more recently in Brazil, attracted Argentinean sociologists. In general, circulation and exchanges were favored by the action of foreign philanthropic foundations (American and European) whose funding was crucial for the mobility of scholars, whether it allowed the invitation of foreign professors to teach, or the training of young scholars abroad. As graduate programs were established late, getting a PhD abroad remained until recently as a very valuable asset. It is worth noting that voluntary migration was supplemented by forced migration, as political persecution in the 1970s took many scholars to exile. But foreign funding was also important for local institutions. Especially during the first half of the period under analysis, when military regimes alternated with democratic ones, research activities were largely dependent on “hard currency” flowing from abroad. Surely, as in other peripheral countries, the capacity to control the flow of “imports” of ideas and funding frequently worked as a source of power and intellectual legitimacy in the local scenario. As such, it raised intense controversies,  In peripheral countries, the “illusion of autarky” (Heilbron 2015, p. 7) that may affect researchers of the so-called global north is less frequent. 3

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usually triggered by those who were excluded of such connections and resources.

 ociology in the Politicized Universities S and Academic Field Sociology’s capacity to prosper as an academic discipline depended upon the shifting situation of the local academic and scientific institutions and the material support they could provide. As research activities are concerned, under the period we are analyzing, there was a major move from dependence on foreign money toward public funding. Albeit unsteady, fellowships and research-track positions supported by government became more and more important (Snyder et  al. 2013) ever since the mid-1980s and, in particular, from the 2000s. Teaching activities, on their behalf, were more constantly developed in public institutions. Though there were some important private universities that decided to offer sociology programs, it was in public universities—and specially at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA)—where most of the sociologists were trained (see below). Given the latter, it may be useful to offer some clarifying comments on the particular characteristics of public universities. According to law, these institutions are funded by the state, which imposes neither fees to students nor restrictions to their number. Despite their economic dependence on the state, universities are granted autonomy from state officials. Their authorities are thus chosen by professors, alumni, and students, who have representatives in governmental bodies. These features—open entry, self-government, as well as student’s participation in it—have furnished public universities with a certain “plebeian” and turbulent atmosphere. As it will be seen, more than a mere audience, students were in general a highly politicized and active collective actor, whose preferences were of paramount importance for the growth of certain factions within sociology, and the obstruction of others. However, governmental interference was not unusual in public universities. During the first half of the period under analysis, in effect, military and democratic governments appointed officials (both military and civil) as rectors and deans, thus

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suppressing self-government and student participation. Moreover, big purges in the faculty were usual. Sometimes, as during the last and cruelest dictatorship (1976–1983), academic freedom was canceled, while fees and quotas were established to diminish the number of students (and their political propensities). In that context, sociological activities were one of the main targets because authorities identified the discipline with the “insurgent” movements they had set out to violently eliminate. Such a close connection between public universities and national politics bestowed sociology and its different factions—whether they wanted it or not—with distinctive ideological connotations. Academic credentials and professional experience counted, but as the boundaries of politics and sociology tended to blur, they were seldom appreciated independently of ideological preferences. Not only was that so because politics frequently broke into academia, dismantling teams while creating opportunities for outsiders, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because not infrequently sociologists mobilized political identities and preference to make sense of their “own” intellectual cleavages and disputes. Thus, politics was not just a simple “intruder” coming from the “outside” to affect an “inner” logic of an-otherwise-autonomous “field”. Anti-academic and politicized stances were frequent strategies in the universities (Beigel 2013) as they could, for instance, garner support from such an important public as the students. My analysis will thus map the main transformations of sociological practices against this broader Argentinian social and political context. But the narrative will not be one of a group of “scientists” fighting against the odds for the establishment of a purely scientific sphere.

Sociology as a Consultant Profession The third factor influencing the development of sociology I will examine is the relationships of sociologists with a diverse array of clienteles outside academia (state agencies, private corporations and agencies, as well as NGOs). The greater expansion of those clienteles dates back to the 1990s when in the context of globalization and the neoliberal turn Argentina’s civil society and state bodies engaged in a process of “modernization”.

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Sociologists took advantage of the new scenario and set their sights on “new” territories. The problems and subjects were varied: employment, health, education, social security in the state; human resources and market research and opinion polls in the private sector; social reform on issues like addiction, crime, law, and human rights in the heterogeneous world of NGOs. As elsewhere, sociologists did not enjoy exclusive jurisdiction over these problems. Yet, they managed to become part of the typical set of professionals dealing with them. As a result, the uses of sociology went well beyond the academic world, and jobs multiplied for those who could not—or did not want to—follow a career in the professoriate. Under the new circumstances, it is worth noting, undergraduate programs tended to entrench and defend academic life—even though academic jobs were not always plentiful. Consequently, those sociologists working outside academia engaged in developing new meanings for sociology that were more attuned to their everyday practice. In general, they did this by criticizing what they denounced as academia’s self-­referentiality and lack of social relevance.

 BA School’s Ascendancy and Other U Institutional Settings Much of the narrative of this book revolves around a single—yet central—institution: the undergraduate sociology school of UBA. The centrality of an undergraduate program is surely strange if considered in light of other national experiences as the ones examined in the Sociology Transformed Series. In effect, in most cases there are many schools in different cities with similar weight in the field, and maybe most importantly, graduate programs are a decisive factor in understanding sociology. Also, there are often influential professional associations or learned societies, as well as long-standing journals. In Argentina, to be sure, there were other important institutional settings (to which I will pay attention). But as mentioned above, they were often short-lived. In contrast with institutions like, for example, the American Sociological Association (ASA) or the Brazilian Society of Sociology (SBS for its acronym in Portuguese),

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local attempts were never able to establish themselves as enduringly influential organizations for the whole—or at least a good share of the—community of sociologists. Thus, in order to understand sociology’s development in Argentina, it is important to stress UBA’s school peculiar ascendancy. Since its creation in 1957 this school has been the training center with the biggest number of students and where most of Argentinean sociologists completed their studies. Correspondingly, it has had the biggest faculty, and many of the most-renowned sociologists were part of it. Although in general it did not offer full-time posts, teaching at this center—and specially getting a chair—was one of the main (and sometimes few) ways to make a name as a sociologist. In a context where research funding used to be very limited, teaching—as well as popularity among students—became very important for a great many sociologists. Moreover, UBA’s was the most long-lived school. While many others were successively closed, this program managed to survive through different, and sometime very hostile, historical contexts. But there were two additional, and more general, factors accounting for its influence. On the one hand, there was its location in Buenos Aires, the capital city. In Argentina, despite its federal organization, intellectual and academic development has always tended to concentrate in the metropolitan area (Beigel and Sorá 2019). On the other, the late development of graduate studies in most of the disciplines in Argentina resulted in the strengthening of the importance of the tertiary level. In that context, undergraduate programs (licenciaturas), which in general took five or six years, appeared as the last stage of formal training and the one granting professional identity and jurisdiction. Of course, underlining UBA’s influence does not imply that its school was preserved from the general instability affecting sociological institutions. Far from it, following changes in national government and interventions in public universities, its personnel—professors and instructors—were repeatedly replaced (1966, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1984) by others with more fluent connections with shifting UBA’s authorities. Under those conditions, until the restoration of democracy in the 1980s, there were no enduring intellectual and curricular orientations, and the number of students significantly oscillated. Additionally,

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the physical facilities, in general deficient, also changed, bestowing the school with a “nomadic” aspect. Doubtless, the worst location was the one given during the last military dictatorship when, under the surveillance and control of police and military officers, the school functioned in the basements of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, separated from the rest of the faculty and university. By the same token, its affiliation within UBA departments shifted on more than one occasion: launched under the auspices of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, it was disaffiliated in 1975 and kept isolated until 1990, when a new Faculty of Social Science was founded. There were, nonetheless, other important institutions for the discipline. Some of them were more influential in the first half of the period under analysis; others, in the second, from the 1980s on. Among the first ones were the undergraduate schools in private (and in some cases Catholic) institutions in Buenos Aires. Although their enrolment was much smaller than the one at UBA, they were important settings where sociologists could teach and make a living. Also, there were a group of private research institutes which fostered a great number of empirical studies. In general, they were funded by foreign philanthropic agencies. Although they did not engage in formal teaching, as they were not allowed to award diplomas, they provided scientific training for young sociologists who, in the absence of graduate programs in universities, were employed as research assistants. Both private universities and private research institutes were particularly important during the last military dictatorship (1976–1983) when they functioned as “shelters” where sociologists could teach and do research, albeit with significant difficulties. Most of these institutions continue to exist after the restoration of democracy, but their influence waned with the emergence or strengthening of other organizations. Among the institutions gravitating in the second half, we should mention the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET, for its Spanish Acronym), a public organization that had been created in 1958 under the partial inspiration of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). As with its French model, it offered graduate fellowships and full-time research posts, that is, the possibility of becoming a salaried state employee. Sociology, like the rest of the social

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sciences and humanities, had a marginal space in this institution until the 1980s, when the institution finally started to mitigate its focus on the natural and “hard” sciences. However, it was only in the 2000s that CONICET became a major employer for sociologists interested in an academic career. During those years, CONICET was the central institution of a remarkable expansion of Argentinean research capacities. Between 2003 and 2015, the number of researchers tripled from 3500 to more than 9000, while social sciences and humanities markedly improved their share, accounting for a fifth of the total stock of researchers (Beigel and Sorá 2019). Universities were not excluded from the growth, and new undergraduate programs in sociology were launched or reopened after their closure during the last military regime. Most of those programs were inaugurated at public universities while a few were within private universities. By 1983 there remained only three; today there are nineteen (Pereyra 2017). In addition to this, there was an impressive expansion of graduate studies in the area. Master’s programs were created in the 1990s, followed by PhDs in the next decade. Their growth was stimulated by the rise in CONICET’s doctoral fellowships, which channeled a great quantity of resources to the new programs (Beigel and Sorá 2019). As expected, the expansion and diversification of the institutions engaged in sociological teaching and research have recently resulted in the lessening of the traditional centrality of UBA’s undergraduate school and its major weight on the training of the new generations. But this organization has not lost all of its influence, as it continues to be the school with the biggest enrolment and staff, though other organizations became more and more important.4

 While in 2001 UBA’s program accounted for almost 70% of the country’s total enrolment (around 7300 students), in 2017 its share dropped to 45% (around 8000). With a population at a standstill, this process entailed a gross loss in the number of UBA students. Yet, as many of the new programs are just beginning to have graduates, UBA’s position at this matter has still not changed: between 70 and 75% of the new sociologists are trained at this institution. Source: http://estadisticasuniversitarias.me.gov.ar/#/home. 4

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Periodization and Sources Although reference will be made to previous developments in sociology and the so-called essayistic tradition, the focus of this book will be on the study of the process of renewal and expansion started in the 1950s. This decision is neither original nor free of controversy. Many histories present this moment as “foundational”. In some cases, those accounts are not without a bias: neglecting previous developments in the discipline was a way of highlighting the importance of the movement of renewal, of which many of those who wrote those stories were active members.5 Indeed, as was underlined by more recent studies, there had been some important prior institutional progress: sociology was taught as an auxiliary course in the training of lawyers, philosophers, and historians, and empirical research (albeit limited) had been initiated. Yet, despite this background, sociology remained a quite marginal intellectual endeavor, both in academia and in the more general public sphere. In this context, the creation of the first undergraduate programs in the 1950s and the launching of an unprecedented empirical research agenda were a watershed in the history of the discipline, which signaled Argentinean sociology’s entrance into the wave of global changes in the social sciences that followed the end of WWII. First, those processes led to the recognition of sociology’s full academic citizenship, now as an autonomous discipline. From that moment on, teaching sociology was aimed at training students who would have sociology as their main professional concern. Second, the creation of official diplomas changed the patterns of recruitment, training, and membership in the discipline. Sociology was no longer to be taught as a “secondary”—sometimes even avocational—activity in small and low-profile circles of “initiates”. Third, the existence of a licenciatura laid the foundations of a new—and much bigger—professional community with consequences in the academic and extra-academic worlds. Additionally, the expansion of teaching posts and research opportunities allowed for an unparallel rise in job opportunities. Until that moment, those in charge of teaching were part-time  For an in-depth analysis of the instrumental uses of the history of the discipline among Argentinean sociologists, see Blois (2009). 5

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sociologists who made most of their living working in non-related activities—in general as lawyers and public officers (Giorgi and Vila 2019). Finally, sociology became fashionable, and that multiplied the material and symbolic resources for the discipline: the press got interested in the “new science” and some books became best-sellers. This book is partially based on a previous work on the historical emergence and development of sociology in Argentina (Blois 2018). Apart from secondary sources such as autobiographical accounts of sociologists and quantitative data (regarding students, graduates, and faculties in different universities, as well as research staff at CONICET), my research is based on first-hand information, comprising archival materials and in-­ depth interviews. Archival materials included documents from sociology schools—with particular focus in UBA’s program—such as teaching materials, syllabi, course’s curricula, records and minutes of the School’s and Faculty’s authorities, personnel CVs, student publications (magazines, flyers, leaflets), as well as the main sociological journals and cultural-­and-political outlets related to the discipline. The general press was also examined to study sociologists’ public visibility. The interviews were conducted with sociologists belonging to different generations and with different backgrounds, intellectual references, and professional activities (some in the academia, others outside the professoriate). The book follows a chronological order. Given the intimate link between national politics and sociological activities, some of the intervals were framed by the changes in government. Nonetheless, the logic and dynamics of the situation of sociology itself provides the rationale for the structure of the chapters.

References Alatas, Syed Farid. 2003. Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences. Current Sociology 51 (6): 599–613. https://doi. org/10.1177/00113921030516003. Beigel, Fernanda. 2013. Introduction: The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. In The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. Farnham: Ashgate.

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Beigel, Fernanda, and Gustavo Sorá. 2019. Ardous Institutionalization in Argentina’s SSH: Expansion, Asymmetries and Segmented Circuits of Recognition. In Shaping Human Science Disciplines. Institutional Developments in Europe and Beyond, ed. Christian Fleck, Matthias Duller, and Victor Karády. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Blois, Juan Pedro. 2009. Interpretaciones enfrentadas de la historia de la sociología en Argentina. Las lecturas del pasado como disputas del presente. Argumentos. Revista de Crítica Social 10: 1–29. ———. 2018. Medio siglo de sociología en la Argentina. Ciencia, profesión y política (1957–2007). Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Fleck, Christian, Matthias Duller, and Victor Karády. 2018. Introduction: Shaping Disciplines—Recent Institutional Developments in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Europe and Beyond. In Shaping Human Science Disciplines. Institutional Developments in Europe and Beyond, ed. Christian Fleck, Matthias Duller, and Victor Karády. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gieryn, Thomas F. 1983. Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists. American Sociological Review 48 (6): 781. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095325. Giorgi, Guido, and Esteban Vila. 2019. Un caso desafiante de profesionalización: Las redes de la sociología argentina entre 1940 y 1955. Revista Temas Sociológicos. 25 (December): 125–155. https://doi.org/10.29344/071 96458.25.2166. Heilbron, Johan. 2015. French Sociology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Heilbron, Johan, Nicolas Guilhot, and Laurent Jeanpierre. 2008. Toward a Transnational History of the Social Sciences. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 44 (2): 146–160. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.20302. Kreimer, Pablo, and Alejandro Blanco. 2008. Sociologie et Démocratie ? Un Panorama de La Discipline En Argentine Entre 1983 et 2007. Sociologies Pratiques 16 (1): 147–161. https://doi.org/10.3917/sopr.016.0147. Murmis, Miguel. 2005. Sociology, Political Science and Anthropology: Institutionalization, Professionalization and Internationalization in Argentina. Social Science Information 44 (2–3): 227–282. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0539018405053290. Pereyra, Diego. 2010. Dilemmas, Challenges and Uncertain Boundaries of Argentinean Sociology. In The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions. London: Sage. ———. 2017. Notas sobre la crisis de la sociología argentina. Formación y desarrollo profesional en cuestión. Entramados y Perspectivas 7: 96–129.

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Piovani, Juan Ignacio. 2019. Sobre la utilidad de las ciencias sociales en tiempos de neoliberalismo y posverdad. In La política científica en disputa: diagnósticos y propuestas frente a su reorientación regresiva, ed. F.  Brugaleta, M.  Canosa González, M.  Starcenbaum, and N.  Welshinger, 115–133. La Plata: UNLP-CLACSO. Snyder, Richard, Angélica Durán-Martínez, María Angélica Bautista, and Jazmín Sierra. 2013. Producing Knowledge in the Global South: The Political Economy of Social Science in Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2327889. Turner, Stephen, and Jonathan Turner. 1990. The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Vessuri, Hebe. 1990. El Sísifo sureño: las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Quipu 7 (2): 149–185.

2 The “Modernization” of the Social Sciences: Gino Germani and Sociology as a Science (1955–1966)

Abstract  A radical renewal of sociology was started by mid-1950s when the first department was launched at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The movement, led by Gino Germani, put forward an unprecedented research agenda, promoted applied sociology, and engaged the discipline in elucidating current social and hot issues. Mostly funded by foreign foundations and inspired by the latest US sociology, Germani and his collaborators scornfully neglected previous scholarship as represented by the so-called sociología de cátedra, but also by the national essayists, the most relevant local intellectual tradition. In their view, these orientations were not “scientific”. Progress was astonishing, and sociology became fashionable. Yet difficulties appeared when students, whose enrollments skyrocketed, started to reject “scientific sociology” and defend advocacy and a more politicized approach. A mass public university like UBA, which established no quotas and endowed the student movement with a great share of power, proved not to welcome Germani’s main ideas. Keywords  Gino Germani • “Scientific sociology” • Sociología de cátedra [arm-chair sociologists] • Essayists • Mass university © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_2

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 ociological Teaching and (Limited) Research S Activities Since the 1900s Sociology in Argentina was not born in the second half of the 1950s. The first chair of sociology in Argentina was created at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL for its acronym in Spanish) of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in 1898. This initiative, which was part of a more general movement in Latin America (Garreton et al. 2005), was later followed in other faculties and universities in the interior of the country. Sociology was taught as an auxiliary discipline in the training of lawyers, philosophers, and historians. In general, its professors were law-trained intellectuals who, interested in the human and social sciences, engaged in intense reading of European and American up-to-date scholarship in the social sciences. Their classes included such topics as the history of the discipline, the rationale justifying its autonomy from other disciplines, its status vis-à-vis philosophy and science, and the main theories of the moment (Pereyra 2008). Some of these intellectuals, like Juan Agustin García (1862–1923) and Ernesto Quesada (1858–1934), produced important historical works about colonial times and the nineteenth century based on documents (Altamirano 2004). The development of empirical research on present issues came more slowly in academia. Although some important professors called attention to the need for furthering empirical examination through statistics and observations, they did not become personally involved in such an agenda (Blanco 2006). Hence, during the first decades of the twentieth century, the empirical research on current social trends that was conducted in Argentina was, as in many other countries, done by government bodies (concerned with labor and health problems), and generally disconnected from academic sociology. This situation started to change in the 1940s when some research institutes were created in universities. Ricardo Levene (1885–1959), a widely recognized historian, was the director of UBA’s institute. Although he had been teaching sociology since 1924, when he was appointed chair, his research work was conducted in the field of history. Yet, he was an enthusiastic promoter of sociological activities. Under his leadership, the

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Institute sought to federate the sociological work developed throughout the country under the different chairs. He also fostered international relationships with colleagues from Latin America and the United States, mainly through correspondence (Morales Martín 2013). Perhaps more importantly, the first sociological journal, the Boletín del Instituto de Sociología, was released. This journal engaged in an active exchange policy with foreign publications, resulting in the arrival of many leading journals to the Institute (like the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review). Topics of discussion in the Institute featured the traditional matters addressed in classes, but they also included— and this was the novelty—the compilation, production, and analysis of quantitative information (González Bollo 1999), though limited, as resources were very scarce (Janos 1963). Levene believed that empirical research, which was usually referred to as “sociography”, was becoming more and more important as laissez faire policies were abandoned as a result of the Great Depression. Consequently, he called for the conduction of a new national census—it was more than thirty years since the last one—and managed to make a room, albeit modest, for the Institute in its preparation (Blanco 2006). Although he favored French bibliography in his teaching, Levene was not unaware of the international shift in the discipline toward American sociology, to which he attracted some students. Gino Germani (1911–1979), then an unpaid assistant in the Institute, was particularly enthusiastic about the idea of sociology as an “empirical science” and conducted the first studies in the Institute, working on the middle classes and its recent transformations. “Applied sociology” was also promoted by Levene, who encouraged one of his collaborators to get in touch with the American Institute of Public Opinion directed by George Gallup. They were interested in getting advice on polling and on implementing opinion surveys in Argentina (Morales Martín 2013). Yet, such “modernizing” initiatives had to coexist with more “traditional” approaches significantly influenced by German scholarship, which defined sociology as a branch of philosophy or moral theory and adhered to the Diltheyan division between Geisteswissenschaft and the Naturwissenschaft. These views, shared by most of the collaborators of the Institute, were not opposed to “sociography”, albeit they pictured it as a

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“secondary” (and less prestigious) endeavor and neglected in their teaching. Indeed, of the fifty-eight papers published in the Boletín between 1942 and 1947, only six were the product of empirical research (five of which were Germani’s). The rest was concerned with social theory and the history of social thought in Argentina, or reported on teaching activities in the country or abroad (Blanco 2006). Texts based on commenting other texts were much frequent than “numbers”. Miguel Figueroa Román, a sociologist who was fostering empirical research and American sociology from a very active Institute located in Tucumán, did not hide his feelings about this. In the first meeting of a fleeting professional association trying to gather all sociologists in the country, he stated: “Sociological inquiry has devoted its best efforts to philosophical theorizing ignoring its real roots in life itself. Thus, it has barely touched on concrete reality, and elaborated its ideas on the weak base of arm-chair assessments” (Cuevillas 1950, p. 190). “Traditional” perspectives were further strengthened in 1946 when an intervention by the Peronist government in the universities trying to suppress criticism resulted in the departure of Levene and Germani, and of many other professors who were opposed to the government. After an impasse in which the Institute’s activities were stopped, Rodolfo Tecera del Franco (1923–1991), a lawyer trained at the University of Córdoba, was appointed as its director. An enthusiastic Peronist sympathizer, he promoted an “official” version of the discipline, grounded on right-wing nationalism, and even combined his lectures in sociology with “Principles of Justicialismo”, a mandatory course for all the students of the Faculty in which the main ideological elements of the regime were taught (Tortti and Soprano 2004). Franco’s preferences lay in German sociology: in 1953 he sponsored the visit of the conservative German sociologist Hans Freyer to lecture at UBA. As can be seen, sociology had managed to make significant progress in terms of institutionalization in the universities since the first chair had been created at the end of the nineteenth century (Blanco 2006). Yet, such developments were greater in teaching than empirical research which, albeit not nonexistent, was not recognized as a fundamental part of the discipline by many of its practitioners. To be sure, the intellectual dispositions of agents trained as lawyers, who most of the time were not

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devoted to sociology as a full-time activity, conditioned such preferences. But the weak performance in empirical research was also greatly determined by the permanent lack of material resources and limited links between sociologists and planning state agencies. In that context, the process of expansion and renewal of sociology starting in 1955, which was mainly based on the resources coming from international organizations and American philanthropic foundations, was a watershed in the history of the discipline in Argentina. Inspired by the international movement toward the “modernization” of the social sciences started after WWII, those who promoted the renewal of sociology fostered an unprecedented agenda of empirical research and launched the first school of sociology in the country. Those efforts were not presented as the continuation of previous developments. Far from it, Gino Germani, the leader of the movement and former member of the Institute, called for a general break with previous scholarship and refused to cooperate with those who had been in charge of most of the twenty chairs spread out in the country—now scornfully designated as sociólogos de cátedra.1 It was the hour of sociology as a science, and indeed “scientific sociology” was the brand with which he identified the “new” orientation.

 he Renewal of Sociology and Gino T Germani’s Rise The removal of Perón from power by a coup d’état in 1955 put an end to a political experience that in a decade had produced deep transformations in Argentinean society. Economic changes fostered by industrialization went hand in hand with significant improvement in workers’ life conditions. Thanks to the passing of a diverse array of social rights, workers had achieved an unprecedented standard of living and unions had become strong political actors. Such changes, blended with a belligerent nationalist and populist discourse, produced persistent discontent among traditional economic elites—in particular, the landed gentry—and  Implying something like “arm-chair sociologists”, that is,  professors who did not engage with empirical research and who developed a “bookish” sociology. 1

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important fractions of the middle classes. Intellectuals overwhelmingly saw Peronism as a local (and late) expression of Fascism. To be sure, Perón’s policies on universities did not do much to mitigate this view. Although it eliminated fees and quotas, setting the scene for an impressive democratizing rise in student numbers, the government canceled universities’ self-government and expelled critical professors.2 Such purges were particularly influential in the human sciences where liberal professors were replaced by (ultra)conservative intellectuals who did not hide their affection for the regime, as was the case with Tecera del Franco (Sigal 1991). Perón’s fall triggered a major transformation in universities. In some institutions, including the FFyL of UBA, those who had lectured during Peronism were immediately removed for having “collaborated with the tyrant” and replaced by those who had previously suffered from the purges of the regime. While ousted from the universities, these professors had remained delivering courses and lecturing in unofficial private institutions which served as a “shadow university”. Once returned to their posts, many of them promoted research activities, for, in their view, vocational training ought to be supplemented by the making of new and “useful” knowledge. Such an accomplishment was crucial if universities were to recover their intellectual and social standing after what they deemed, almost unanimously, as a deleterious “obscurantist” period. Many initiatives were introduced in this direction: full-time posts were significantly expanded,3 the chair system was replaced by departmental organization, and research institutes were strengthened. The launching of new and “modern” programs like Sociology—others were Psychology and Education—was part of this reformist mood (Buchbinder 1997). This perspective was convergent with a rising “modernizing” agenda advanced by many political actors who, in accordance to regional tendencies, defended state planning based on science and technology as the key to unblocking “development”. According to that view, Argentina’s  Among them, there were prestigious scholars like Bernardo Houssay (future Medicine Nobel Prize winner), and Raúl Prebisch (one of the most influential economists in Latin America) (Kirtchik and Heredia 2015). 3  Full-time appointments had been created during Peronism, but they were only expanded later. Whereas by 1957 there were only 10 at UBA, by 1962 there were 600 (Buchbinder 1997). 2

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take-off, as well as Latin America’s, demanded “experts” in development trained in the latest social sciences (Abarzua Cutroni 2012). If engineers and economists were the favorites given local technological and economic backwardness, sociologists could also be important inasmuch as “development” was seen as a complex process combining the social, political, and cultural. As an official document from a new state planning agency stated in 1962: It is clear that “development” is not a concept that can be validly restricted to the economic sphere, but that it includes all social activities. It is also clear that even economic development in a narrow sense -that is, considered as merely an increase in production-, has as necessary conditions factors that are not exclusively economic, but of a social and cultural nature (such as values and motivations compatible with the rationalization of economic activity) […] Therefore, in order to make an adequate consideration of the problems of development […] it is necessary to take into account the possible cultural and social [elements], for which it will be necessary to get the appropriate data through specific research. (CFI 1962, p. 201)4

Political transformations and changes in the university, as well as the general climate of the times, seemed ripe for the introduction of intellectual innovations: Gino Germani became its key beneficiary. How was he, a former unpaid assistant in the Institute of Sociology, entrusted with the responsibility of organizing the new department and program? Germani was an Italian émigré that came to Argentina at the age of twenty-three persecuted by Fascism. Before leaving Italy, he had spent some time in jail because of his political activities against Mussolini’s regime. Once in his new country, he studied philosophy at UBA (where he was recruited by Levene to work in the Institute) and managed to get a not-too-demanding job at the Ministry of Agriculture which allowed him to further his training as a sociologist. His prior experience in statistics and economics in Italy, where he studied administration, helped him to get involved with quantitative analysis (A. Germani 2008). Such an orientation, along with his interest in American sociology, distinguished him from most of his colleagues in the Institute who, as we saw,  Unless otherwise indicated translations are my own.

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cultivated sociology as a branch of philosophy. After being ousted, he did not give sociology up. Indeed, he managed to build a strong reputation as the “most up to date” sociologist in the broad intellectual field thanks to a diverse array of activities. On the one hand, he worked in two publishing houses where, among other non-related activities to the discipline, he was appointed as the editor of two social science series. The series, for which Germani wrote many prefaces and translated some titles, combined sociology and psychology, and drew mainly from the Anglo-Saxon intellectual world—thus opposing to the German preferences of most “traditional” sociologists. Titles included works by Erich Fromm, Bronislaw Malinowski, George Herbert Mead, Margaret Mead, Raymond Aron, Harold Laski, and many others (Blanco 2006). On the other hand, following his research on the middle classes, he embarked in a more general study on the Argentinean social structure. This work, entitled Estructura social de la Argentina  (The Social Structure of Argentina), appeared in 1955, published by a small printing house run by a fraction of the Radical Civic Union (UCR for its acronym in Spanish), a centrist political party which opposed Peronism. It was one of the first in-depth studies of historic and current socio-demographic tendencies in the country. Without funding (and an academic job) to do the task, Germani had to rely on secondary sources—mainly data from census—although he did some tabulations and employed correlations. Inspired mostly by social morphology as developed in France by Maurice Halbwachs and American stratification studies, references to the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and the British Journal of Sociology were numerous in the book. He was also involved in intense epistemological struggles with his Germanophile peers. Against them, he contended that sociology’s methods were in no way different from those of the natural sciences, at least from the point of view of logical foundations (G. Germani [1952] 2010). His interventions, some of which had been delivered in conferences organized by “arm-chair sociologists”, were gathered in La sociología científica (Scientific Sociology) and published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico Press in 1956. Finally, Germani additionally offered some sociology courses in the Free College of Superior Studies (CLES for its acronym in Spanish), a private school that gathered the most prestigious intellectuals that were opposed to

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Peronism (Neiburg 1998). Although his classes were not so popular— they had no more than ten students—they were key in fostering Germani’s networks and social capital with important members of the intellectual field and in recruiting young students and collaborators. The latter proved crucial to his appointment at UBA in 1955, as some of his students were at the same time active members of the student movement which, once Perón was ousted, managed to get a very influential position in the reorganization of the university. Students’ interest in a new program of sociology was essential, and Germani skillfully showed the discipline’s potential to foster social intervention and social improvement to an audience eager to engage university with improving worker’s lives. Finally, Germani’s anti-fascist and anti-Peronist background was also important, as the students were against Perón and his administration. Once appointed at the head of the new Department of Sociology at UBA in 1956, Germani devoted himself to the launching of its first undergraduate program and the renewal of the Institute’s activities. As the staffing of those settings was substantially determined by the exclusion of the sociólogos de cátedra, many individuals without any significant background in the discipline had to be recruited. They were young graduates in philosophy, engineering, and even accounting who decided to convert themselves to the “new” science. For that, Germani established a two-year specialization in sociology to secure their training and put them to work as teaching instructors and research assistants. Yet, “human resources” were not enough. In that context, Germani sought (and found) the support of international institutions like the UNESCO and American philanthropic foundations—Ford and Rockefeller alone endowed UBA with 245,000 dollars (Verón 1974).5 According to a diagnosis shared by donors and recipients, sociology’s development in Argentina depended on a massive import operation of ideas and personnel. Only that could break the vicious circle in which there were no properly trained sociologists because there were no proper schools, and there were no proper schools because there were no properly trained sociologists (G. Germani

 About two million US dollars inflation-adjusted to 2020.

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[1961] 1979). Thus, funding was employed to support the training of Germani’s closest collaborators abroad, mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, and, to a lesser degree, in France and Chile, in the recently created Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO for its acronyms in Spanish).6 At the same time, more than twenty foreign scholars were invited to teach or conduct research at the new Department, all imbued with the idea of fostering sociology as a “science”. The list included Kalman Silvert—a specialist in Latin America, Ford official, and friend of Germani—Ralph Beals, Irving Louis Horowitz, Aaron Cicourel, Paul Baran, Georges Friedman, Alain Touraine, Sammuel Noah Eisenstadt, Peter Heintz, Johan Galtung, Lucien Brams, José Medina Echavarría, and Luiz Aguiar de Costa Pinto (A.  Germani 2008). As Blanco and Wilkis (2018, p. 216) stated, such circulation made UBA an “unofficial international center” for study and research, something that bestowed it with great visibility and prestige in the region. However, although Germani’s qualities as an institution builder were unquestionable, the mounting of a PhD program, which was expected to commence in 1964 (Janos 1963), was unfeasible, as resources were insufficient and proved unsteady.

 mpirical Research as a Tool of Social Change. E State Planning and Public Enlightenment Attuned with the orientations and preferences that were radiating from the global centers of the discipline, especially the United States, Germani and his collaborators promoted sociology as a “science” whose primary concerns should be in studying the main social problems affecting the country in its “transition to modernity”. Although sociology should be detached and value-free, it was not to be confused with purely academic  FLACSO and the Latin American Center of Social Sciences research (CLAPCS for its acronym in Spanish) were two regional institutions created in 1957 by UNESCO and Latin American governments to foster social sciences in the region. The first one, located in Santiago de Chile, offered graduate courses, with a focus on “modern” quantitative methodologies. The latter, located in Rio de Janeiro, was conceived as a research institute in charge of coordinating studies in different countries while encouraging comparative research. 6

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scholarship. On the contrary, sociologists should enthusiastically engage in the search for non-academic publics—especially state officials dealing with the challenges of “social development”—and show them the importance of empirical “modern” research for planning and social improvement. The Institute’s activities multiplied as money from foundations and international organizations allowed the conduct of many studies. By 1966 there were twenty-nine researchers, many of whom also taught in the program (García-Bouza and Verón 1967). If qualitative techniques were not excluded, the focus was in quantitative methods: survey research was the star. If up to that moment Germani had to rely on secondary sources, the new affluence allowed for the production of first-hand information. For example, within the framework of a transnational research of social structure funded by UNESCO in four Latin American major cities (Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Santiago), the Institute conducted a study with a sample comprising more than 2000 homes and an army of paid survey takers. Questionnaires, which included more than 300 questions, revolved around some of the topics Germani has addressed in Estructura social de la Argentina, though now new information could be produced (Graciarena and Sautu 1961). The purchase of an IBM computer allowed to increase data processing speed and bestowed “scientific sociology” with a cutting-edge look. Advanced students were recruited as research assistants: they provided a free workforce in exchange of training while on the job. This, together with the multiplication of courses in methodology, statistics, and sample design, were among the main features that “scientific sociology” promoted against the sociólogos de cátedra and its “uncontrolled speculation” and “bookish” style of work. Topics of research were manifold, though they were firmly integrated on a common agenda related to “Development”: social stratification, urbanization, industrialization, social mobility, secularization, and migration. The emphasis on current problemata was such that as a foreign observer noted: “There are few countries of the world today where social research is so manifestly guided by actual social needs as in Argentina […] The research projects of the Sociological Institute of Buenos Aires University read like a catalog of the problems of a society developing toward modern patterns rapidly and often in an erratic manner” (Janos 1963, p. 14).

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Such frenetic activity did not go unnoticed. Pieces of news referring to the Institute’s activities were not uncommon in the press (Kratochwill 1970), while its major works were channeled through low-priced editions published by UBA’s new printing house, Eudeba.7 In the context of the expansion of the number of university students (UBA’s students had gone from 50,000  in 1947 to 140,000  in 1955) and a growing middle-class readership, some titles by Germani and his collaborators sold pretty well, and some even became best-sellers. This was the case with José Luis de Ímaz’s Los que mandan (Those Who Rule), a detailed (and mostly quantitative) study of local elites and the lack of a unified ruling class, which sold more than 40,000 copies in just two years. Sociology had put its prior ostracism behind and became fashionable. In a popular magazine which used to have a section on the latest publishing events, a journalist was quite clear: “sociology sells: it is a good business” and wondered “why was sociology so appealing to the general readership?” (in Confirmado 1965a, p. 38). Among the best-known interventions of “scientific sociology” in the public sphere in those years was Germani’s interpretation of the origins and nature of Peronism. A quite complex phenomenon—which combined leftist with rightist traditions—Peronism appeared as the most puzzling enigma in the intellectual field. Many accounts, from different ideological stances, were offered, although most of them pictured (and denounced) it as a local (and late) emulation of Fascism. Germani presented a different view, which he proclaimed to be “scientific”. For him, the social bases and thus the general meaning of Fascism and Peronism were very different. While the first one had had a regressive orientation affecting worker’s interest and organizations, the latter incarnated a democratizing process. Liberal democracy, to be sure, had been neglected in favor of plebiscitary forms and the press was controlled. Still, labor classes’ interests had been promoted in the political arena as never before. The question remained though as to how an anticommunist military officer like Perón could get the support of the workers to the detriment of their traditional leftwing organizations. Based on empirical data  In just a few years, Eudeba became the biggest Spanish-language printing house in the world. Its titles covered a wide range of areas, in which social and human sciences were prominent. Between 1959 and 1966, it printed more than 11 million copies, and 800 new titles, a good share of which were translations from English and French (Dujovne 2016). 7

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concerning internal migration, Germani showed that industrialization as developed after the Great Depression had brought about a “new labor class” composed of young migrants coming from traditional social milieus of the poorer regions of the country. Once in the metropolitan areas, those new workers were an “available mass”, whose durable “traditional attitudes” paved the way for the constitution of a paternalistic and authoritarian leadership (G. Germani [1962] 1968). Drawing on empirical data and social theories highlighting asynchronies in accelerated transitions, “scientific sociology” introduced itself to the learned public with an original view on the hottest issue of its time (Neiburg 1998).

 onsultant Profession and the (Failed) Search C of Clienteles Connections of “scientific sociology” to lay publics would not only be fostered from an academic base. Germani and his collaborators thought that sociology should also be promoted as a consulting profession. In their view, sociologists were going to become highly demand professionals in areas such as labor relations, education, health, social welfare, and human resources and market studies (G. Germani and Graciarena 1958). There were, they thought, many organizations—state agencies but also corporations and unions—in need of sociological expert advice. The problem was that they did not necessarily know that they needed sociological expertise. As a result, potential niches were occupied by unqualified personnel. In that context, the Department encouraged activities beyond academia. On the one hand, it established a short graduate program in “applied sociology” especially designed for all those who, after completing their licenciatura, would not be interested in following an academic career. The first program was in “Social Psychology” but others were expected to follow. On the other hand, the Department sought to establish associations with state planning agencies, offering its human resources for the design and conduct of applied studies (A.  Germani 2008). While these activities could show sociology’s usefulness to potential clienteles, they would also provide students with the chance to do

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“internships in those organizations where they are bound to work as professionals after completing their program” (Germani and Graciarena 1958, p.  6). Such initiatives were grounded on a view that, while it defended “pure” science as the prime movens of science (G.  Germani [1946] 2006), contended that applied sociology was a necessary supplement to academic activities. In a vein that anticipated Burawoy’s remarks on the division of sociological labor, Germani called for intense cooperation between sociologists in the academia and outside it. Applied sociology was necessary because: Not only does the knowledge of social reality represent the necessary antecedent of social action, but knowledge itself, even in its purely theoretical aspect, can only be developed in contact with the current problems that society presents in its concrete existence. The need to avoid any gap between theory and practice simply points to the need for a fruitful and constant interaction between the two. (G. Germani 1964)

Such an emphasis on applied sociology and the need for creating new clienteles and publics may seem striking for a group of scholars who were full-time academics, working on the institutionalization of sociology as a full-fledged academic discipline. In fact, in many other national experiences the academization of sociology was accompanied by the weakening—if not interruption—of the bonds between sociologists and lay publics. In the United States, for example, the consolidation of the first departments was inseparable of the drawing of a “protective border” from social demands and the establishment of a greater degree of independence (Turner 2014). A similar pattern, albeit mentors were very different, is found in Brazil, especially in São Paulo, where scientism was also a protective term aimed at isolating sociology from political pressures (Cordeiro and Neri 2019).8 Of course, Germani and his collaborators did not want the discipline to loss its autonomy. Indeed, they were quite  In the United States demands came from social reform movements, a diverse array of associations commanded by advocated citizens whose main concern was in improving the life of the poor and immigrants through ameliorative actions and moral education. In Brazil, they came from “above”, as the launching of the first programs in the 1930s was generously supported by economic and political elites in search of modern expertise for government tasks. In both cases mentor’s support risked intellectual independence in favor of reform-oriented inquiries. 8

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insistent upon the defense of sociology as non-partisan and value ­neutral.9 However, despite some progress, the links of “scientific sociology” with wider audiences and clienteles were still not plentiful, and in that context, potential isolation might appear as a more obvious risk than the losing of intellectual freedom. Adding allies to the first ones—student movements, UBA’s authorities, the American foundations—seemed a necessary condition to secure sociology’s place in academia as well as in society in general. Yet, although the general social situation seemed in principle ripe for the diffusion of the uses of sociology, its reception was lukewarm. Non-­ related jobs would soon be a ghost haunting the program, for the share of the new graduates in state positions, and demand by state agencies, remained far below Germani’s hopes. Not only did the state agencies fail to provide a steady base of opportunities to advance an “expert” career— as changes in the governments produced changes in bureaucracy—but the agencies failed to support the Department and Institute with funds. Indeed, there were even some high-ranking state officials, especially in the military, who were suspicious of the “new” discipline and associated it with communist activities (A.  Germani 2008). As a result, foreign funding was the main support of “scientific sociology”. American dollars paid, as mentioned, for the visiting scholars and studies abroad of young graduates. They also supported the conduct of empirical studies and the establishment of the first up-to-date sociological library. Local resources were troublesome and inadequate. Full-time appointments, which should be provided by UBA’s budget, soon proved not enough; physical facilities were not suitable as the Department had to operate in a small room that was borrowed from the Philosophy Institute (G. Germani [1961] 1979). As a local observer has insightfully stated, “the lack of external publics— whether public or private—which demanded for the services of sociology to deal with their problems exposed a clear contradiction: how to foster  In the afore-mentioned best-seller, de Ímaz explained: “The common reader, the one who does not regularly frequent this somewhat esoteric science that is sociology, should know that works, such as this one, are always value neutral. That is: analysis of facts, explanation of things […] about which no judgments of good or bad […] are opened. Those judgments will be made only by the reader [...] Our intellectual scene is full of value judgments, while in turn there is a lack of […] works chasing objective analysis” (de Ímaz 1964, p. 2). 9

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applied sociology in a society who did not ask for their products?” (Sidicaro 1993, p. 69).

Sociologists Versus Essayists The creation of the Department at UBA and the renewal of its Institute had a strong impact in the local sociological situation. These initiatives established a border that divided the field in two sides, as “traditional” sociologists did not simply perish. Indeed, the so-called sociólogos de cátedra managed to keep their appointments in universities of the interior of the country (like Córdoba, Mendoza, and Santa Fe) and controlled some institutional assets. The most visible figure was Alfredo Poviña (1904–1986), a lawyer who during Peronism had managed to make a name as a sociologist in Argentina and abroad10 and actively promoted the organization of regular meetings and conferences. Such efforts included the establishment in 1959 of the Argentinean Sociological Society (SAS for its acronym in Spanish), a learned society, which gathered more than 100 members (Pereyra 2005). Germani and his followers created an opposed association: the Argentinean Sociological Association (ASA for its acronyms in Spanish). This was an exclusive (and short-lived) organization, which openly barred all those who, like most of the sociólogos de cátedra, did not have full-time jobs as “sociologists”, whether they were in the academia or outside it (Blanco 2006). Here, “quality”, and integration under a common faith, mattered more than “quantity”. However, “arm-chair sociology” was only one of the intellectual traditions that “scientific sociology” was to differentiate from. Important as it was inasmuch as they could compete for the same resources (chairs, associations, international networks, and funding), the sociólogos de cátedra were marginal in the broader intellectual field. Much more influential  His Historia de la sociología en Latinoamerica, a comprehensive (albeit not in-depth) study on the sociological chairs and main sociologists in Latin America, was published by Fondo de Cultura Económica, a prestigious Mexican printing house. Moreover, thanks to an active international networking, he promoted the creation in 1950 of the Latin American Sociological Association (ALAS for its acronyms in Spanish), the first regional association in the world, in which he was appointed president a year later (Blanco 2005). 10

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was a breed of intellectuals who, in the wake of the profound crises triggered by the Great Depression in 1930, had produced influential essays in which they interpreted the recent transformations of Argentinean society in light of what they termed as an enduring national character. Those essays, which were warmly received by intellectuals and the learned public (Jackson and Blanco 2014), pictured a pessimistic and fatalist view of Argentina’s constitution. Telluric reasoning, tracing national character to local geography, was accompanied by inspiration from literature and personal experience. As it could be expected, Germani and his collaborators were not fond of those works. What they saw was excessive “impressionism” and literary inspiration, as well as a lack of political detachment, which deprived them of any value to the discipline. In their view, data and facts should serve to launch a new and “scientific” informed phase in the interpretation of local society. Yet what they scornfully termed as “para-sociology” was the current expression of the most celebrated national intellectual tradition. This tradition, started around the 1850s, comprised major thinkers who had also been active politicians in the organization of the country’s institutions.11 But “scientific sociology” was uninterested and conceived of essayists as competitors more than allies whose work could serve as an additional source of inspiration. As Jackson and Blanco (2014) stated, whereas in Europe and United States, sociologists established their enterprise against a much more differentiated intellectual milieu including writers, philosophers, psychologists, and historians, in Argentina (as in general in Latin America), they confronted essayists in their search to be appreciated in the more general intellectual field. The essayistic tradition proved resilient. Surprisingly, in response to the challenge of “scientific sociology”, a new generation of essayists mobilized some of its findings and ideas. That use attested to the success and visibility of sociology as was employed as a source of intellectual authority  Taking distance from formalistic legal reasoning, they developed a sharp historic framework and sensitiveness to address local peculiarities and the reasons why the country had not made its way into (European-styled) “civilization”. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888) was the author of what it was considered the first significant literary-political-and-sociological work in Argentina: Facundo. This was an original socio-political essay which, not without a great deal of sociological reasoning, accounted for the backwardness of Argentinean society and its political difficulties. For a brief introduction, see Celarent (2011). 11

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(Neiburg 1998). However, in the eyes of Germani and his collaborators, this use also implied a “dangerous” blending with an approach with which they were trying to break with. Indeed, while essayists drew heavily from the “new” discipline, they continued defending “personal experience” and literary inspiration as more insightful than “raw” data. They even contended that academia “suffocated” imagination and mocked “scientific sociology” for its credulity about “empiricism” (see next chapter). Such criticism could hardly be ignored by Germani and his collaborators as they were diffused in massive best-sellers and by high-profile intellectuals. Questioned by a journalist in July 1965 about Martinez Estrada’s work, one of the most famous essayists, Germani stated that “there is almost nothing of value in it. His sociological verbiage is a typical Latin phenomenon. The difference is that European essayists are more modest, and they do not pretend to do sociology”. In the same vein, he contended that Juan José Sebreli’s (1930–) success, an essayist whose Buenos Aires, vida cotidiana y alienación had undergone eight editions in less than a year, stemmed from his ability to include “gossip” about sexual behavior (and not even data as was the case with Kinsey’s reports on which Sebreli was inspired) (in Confirmado 1965b, p. 37). The rejection of the most important national intellectual tradition by “scientific sociology” went hand in hand with the full-throttle importation of the most “advanced” approaches produced in the global centers. If Germani was not unaware of the “problems of reception” (G. Germani 1964) and personally avoided any mechanical reproduction of ideas conceived for (and in) other realities (Brasil Jr. 2013),12 most of the recommended readings in UBA’s program were in English. Sociological progress was thus associated with an import operation vis-à-vis a neglect of local works. In that context, the Department established an ambitious effort to translate and print selections from (mostly) American papers and books. The pace was such that, as Irving Horowitz, a visiting scholar collaborating with some of the translations, remembered: “while we violated just about every copyright convention known to mankind, we succeeded in  Germani’s works on Argentina’s modernization process were endowed with a sharp perception of the limitations of structural-functionalism and modernization theory as irradiated from the “north” and, as stated by an increasing set of analysts, mobilized an original theoretical framework (Brasil Jr. 2013). 12

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turning out published and mimeographed materials from the masters of American sociology: Merton, Lazarsfeld, Wirth, Goffman, Lipset, and Bendix” (Horowitz 2008, p. 20). Whether intended or not, such an orientation would bestow “scientific sociology” with a clear American flavor. That flavor would eventually prove pernicious as Anti-imperialist views would soon become strengthened. According to Jackson and Blanco (2014), the border Germani and his followers built with essayists was inseparable from the latter’s strong “impressionist”, speculative, and literary orientation. To support this, they contrast Argentinean experience with that in Brazil, especially in São Paulo, where a new generation of sociologists was enlisted at the same time on an analogous battle with local essayists. In this case, however, interchange was stronger because essays were much more empirically documented and, hence, more useful to sociologists. Educational background, they add, was also important as Argentinean essayists were self-educated writers with a strong disdain for academia, while their colleagues in Brazil were trained in universities and even professors (Jackson and Blanco 2014). However, to understand the variations in the quarrels between sociologists and essayists in both countries, it seems necessary to think of the sociologists’ different mentors. While in São Paulo funding was offered by the State and local donors, and international networks were not so important (Blanco and Brasil Jr. 2018), “scientific sociology” in Argentina, as was seen, was mostly funded by American foundations and other international institutions. If officials did not simply impose their agenda on their recipients (Pereyra 2005), they were a significant driver in reinforcing the tendency to import ideas and references from the “north” more than relying on local sources. Thus, confronted with the tension of every peripheral intellectual space between encouraging a greater openness to promote innovation—at the risk of uncritically reproducing foreign ideas—or autonomy grounded on local traditions of thought—at the risk of succumbing to “provincialism”—the choice was clear. Undoubtedly, the belief in the universal character of the social processes that affected Argentina and Latin America in its transition to “modernity”, a process in which the “north” was well ahead, encouraged

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the massive import of concepts and ideas (ideas that, despite their universal ambition, had been elaborated to study other historical experiences). The distinction drawn by Germani and his followers between sociology and essayists would leave an enduring mark on sociologist’s vision of their discipline. Not because essayists would remain neglected. On the contrary, as will be seen in the following chapter, they came to be a major source of inspiration for a new generation of sociologists, who appropriated their style while reacting against Germani and his collaborators. But “scientific sociology” established a persistent opposition between both fields, depicted as two kinds of approaches with little in common.

 tudent Discontent and the Launching S of an Alternative Institutional Base Albeit decisive, the experience of “scientific sociology” at UBA was not enduring. Within a couple of years, Germani, who had been appraised as an intellectual innovator, became a resisted figure among most of his students. Since its launch, the program was popular, and between 1960 and 1966 an average of 440 beginners enrolled annually (Rodríguez Bustamante 1979). This was initially welcomed as it placed sociology as the second more appealing program offered within the FFyL (after Psychology). But popularity came with a price, as the original research orientation of the program did not relate well to crowded classrooms. On the most immediate effects of growth was the need for a host of part-time low-status young instructors (García-Bouza and Verón 1967). Although they were not well qualified, as they were recruited among fresh graduates, they were sometimes in charge of a whole course. Thus, “practical” training in the craft of research was resented, despite the insistence of Germani and his collaborators on its importance. Moreover, the need to cater to students with increased teaching loads conspired against the creation of full-time appointments with research expectations, as resources were scarce. And, as a matter of fact, some of those who had completed their PhD abroad could not get work at UBA when they returned (A. Germani 2008).

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But more importantly, the growing number of students offered a fertile ground for pollicization and activism. As in other countries of Latin America, the Cuban Revolution in 1959—the first revolution in Spanish—produced a strong drive toward the development of a “new left” which had its main base in the university and intellectual field (see next chapter). While a radical conception of social change became more and more popular among the youth, a detached sociological orientation, one in which the discipline was depicted as value neutral, was increasingly out of place. The ideal of an “objective” science began to be scornfully depicted as “scientificism”, a derogatory term that implied a conservative orientation (Sigal 1991). The international rise of Marxism in metropolitan intellectual centers, along with the initial crises of Structural-Functionalism, with which Germani and his collaborators were identified by students, was decisive. “Stop abstracted empiricism” was indeed the main slogan of a strike declared by students against the teaching of mainstream methodology. They wanted to learn, and they were quite emphatic about, “dialectical methodology”. But this strike was only one episode of a rising belligerency which comprised a wide range of smaller, yet insidious, acts (such as turning off the lights of the classroom when they did not like the lecturer or reading the newspaper in front of their teachers). Germani was aware that student activism was not an exclusively local feature. But the problem within UBA, he contended, was that this institution did not establish quotas and, worse, that it endowed the students with a great share of power within government bodies, a power which could rival that of the professoriate (A. Germani 2008). In this situation, in dean’s and board meetings, strictly academic issues (like appointments, budgets, and courses) started to merge openly with ideological debates on local and international affairs (from the nature of Peronism to the situation in Vietnam) which, at least for the student representatives, usually required formal declarations by the Faculty (Buchbinder 1997).13

 Awareness of how pollicization was gaining momentum within students became even clearer when it was known that one of the leaders of the “methodology strike” had been killed in 1965 in a disastrous (and unprepared) guerrilla campaign in the north of the country. 13

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Confronted with an increasingly hostile audience, Germani drew on an inveterate habit among Argentinean scholars and engaged in the creation of an unofficial and alternative academic organization which could be preserved from political volatility and student rebelliousness. The new institution, the Center for Comparative Sociology (CSC), was launched in 1963 and was designed to serve as a platform through which to channel foreign funding and recruit those sociologists who were coming from abroad after completing their PhD. The CSC was housed at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute (ITDT for its acronym in Spanish), a recently created body which, based upon the model of US philanthropy, tried to promote the local sciences and arts. In the eyes of its creators, cultural activities would remain fragile if they were to be exclusively dependent on (unstable and weak) state funding and, worse, subject to its ideological control. While infrastructure was provided by a local corporation, most of its funding for social research came from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations (Berger and Blugerman 2017). Working conditions were extraordinarily attractive and did not differ much from those that young sociologists had met with in US elite universities, in terms of both wages and infrastructure. Each researcher, indeed, had his own office and even a personal assistant, as well as abundant money to conduct field work (Wainerman 2015). The launching of a scientific journal in 1965, the Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología (RLS), endowed the CSC with a significant international visibility as this outlet became one of the most influential journals in Latin America. Its connections were such that the new institute housed a major international event in 1964 on “comparative sociological research in developing countries” sponsored by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO. More than fifty renowned scholars from eighteen countries attended the conference (including Seymour Lipset, Kingsley Davis, Irwing Horowitz, Kalman Silvert, Johan Galtung, Peter Heintz, Alain Touraine, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso) (A. Germani 2008). This meeting attested to the remarkable recognition of “scientific sociology” as it had developed in Argentina since 1955. But the fact that it took place outside UBA pointed to a conflictive differentiation within the local sociological field in which those sociologists who defended a

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detached version of the discipline were increasingly resisted by most undergraduate students. Thus, if UBA initially provided Germani and his collaborators with a prominent platform from which to promote their inquiries and even bestow them with a significant public visibility (as journalists were quite attentive to the latest news coming from the main national university), mass education, as it took place within that institution, soon conspired against their main ideas on the discipline and on how the new generation should be trained. As a result, even before a new coup triggered another purge at public universities in 1966, Germani left Argentina to continue his career in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University.

References Abarzua Cutroni, Anabella. 2012. The First UNESCO Experts in Latin America (1946-1958). In The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America, ed. Fernanda Beigel. Farnham: Ashgate. Altamirano, Carlos. 2004. Entre el naturalismo y la psicología: el comienzo de la ‘ciencia social’ en la Argentina. In Intelectuales y Expertos. La constitución del conocimiento social en la Argentina, ed. Federico Neiburg and Mariano Plotkin, 395. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Berger, Gabriel, and Leopoldo Blugerman. 2017. La Fundación Ford en la Argentina. Cinco décadas de inversión social privada al servicio del desarrollo y de la protección y ampliación de los derechos humanos. Victoria: UDESA. Blanco, Alejandro. 2005. La Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología: una historia de sus primeros congresos. Sociologias 14: 22–49. https://doi. org/10.1590/s1517-­45222005000200003. ———. 2006. Razón y modernidad. Gino Germani y la sociología en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Blanco, Alejandro, and Antonio Brasil Jr. 2018. A circulação internacional de Florestan Fernandes. Sociologia & Antropologia 8 (1): 69–107. Blanco, Alejandro, and Ariel Wilkis. 2018. The Internationalization of Sociology in Argentina 1985–2015: Geographies and Trends. In The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations, ed. Johan Heilbron, Gustavo Sorá, and Thibaud Boncourt, 371. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Brasil Jr., Antonio. 2013. Passagens para a teoria sociológica: Florestan Fernandes e Gino Germani. São Paulo: Hucitec. Buchbinder, Pablo. 1997. Historia de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Celarent, Barbara [Andrew Abbott]. 2011. Review of Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. American Journal of Sociology 117 (2): 716–723. CFI. 1962. Memoria del Consejo Federal de Inversiones. Desarrollo Económico 2 (1): 199–205. Cordeiro, Veridiana Domingos, and Hugo Neri. 2019. Sociology in Brazil: A Brief Institutional and Intellectual History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pilot. Cuevillas, Fernando. 1950. Primera Reunión Nacional de Sociología Argentina. Revista de Estudios Políticos 54: 178–197. Dujovne, Alejandro. 2016. La máquina de traducir. Eudeba y la modernización de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, 1958–1966. Papeles de Trabajo 10 (18): 123–144. García-Bouza, Jorge, and Eliseo Verón. 1967. Epílogo de una crónica: la situación de la sociología en Argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 3 (1): 91–94. Garretón, Manuel Antonio, Miguel Murmis, Gerónimo de Sierra, and Hélgio Trindade. 2005. Social Sciences in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Social Science Information 44 (2–3): 557–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018405053297. Germani, Ana. 2008. Antifascism and Sociology. Gino Germani 1911-1979. London: Transaction Publishers. Germani, Gino. 1964. La sociología en América Latina: problemas y perspectivas. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. ———. 1968. Política y sociedad en una época de transición. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. ———. 1979. Departamento de Sociología: una etapa 1957-1962. Desarrollo Económico 19 (74): 277. https://doi.org/10.2307/3466632. ———. 2006. Sociología y planificación. In Gino Germani: La renovación intelectual de la sociología, ed. Alejandro Blanco, 107–122. Bernal: UNQ. ———. 2010. Una década de discusiones metodólogicas en la sociología latinoamericana. In Gino Germani. La sociedad en cuestión, ed. Carolina Mera and Julián Rebón. 324–345. Buenos Aires: IIGG-CLACSO. Germani, Gino, and Jorge Graciarena. 1958. “Estudio preparado para el Seminario Latinoamericano Sobre Metodología de la Enseñanza y la Investigación, Organizado Por UNESCO, FLACSO y CLAPCS.” Buenos Aires.

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González Bollo, Hernán. 1999. El nacimiento de la sociología empírica en la Argentina: El Instituto de Sociología, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA), 1940–54. Buenos Aires: Dunken. Graciarena, Jorge, and Ruth Sautu. 1961. La investigación de estratificación y movilidad social en el Gran Buenos Aires. Boletim do Centro Latino-Americano de Pesquisas em Ciências Sociais 4 (4): 277–302. Horowitz, Irving. 2008. Introduction: Sociologists from the Other America. In Germani, Ana: Antifascism and Sociology, 13–23. New York: Routledge. de Ímaz, José Luis. 1964. Los que mandan. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Jackson, Luiz Carlos, and Alejandro Blanco. 2014. Sociologia no Espelho. Ensaístas, cientistas sociais e críticos literários no Brasil e na Argentina (1930-1970). São Paulo: Editora34. Janos, Andrew C. 1963. Research Letter From Argentina. American Behavioral Scientist 6 (5): 13–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/000276426300600506. Kirtchik, Olessia, and Mariana Heredia. 2015. Social and Behavioral Sciences Under Dictatorship. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., 139–146. San Diego, CA: Elsevier. Kratochwill, Germán. 1970. Estado actual de las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 4 (1): 167–176. Morales Martín, Juan Jesús. 2013. Entrecruzamientos en el Instituto de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (1955-1965) y sus derivaciones: movilidad académica y Latin American Studies. In I Jornadas de Sociología UNCuyo. Mendoza. Neiburg, Federico. 1998. Los intelectuales y la invención del peronismo. Buenos Aires: Alianza. Pereyra, Diego. 2005. International Networks and the Institutionalisation of Sociology in Argentina (1940-1963). Sussex: University of Sussex. Pereyra, Diego Ezequiel. 2008. Sociological Textbooks in Argentina and Mexico, 1940—60. Current Sociology 56 (2): 267–287. https://doi. org/10.1177/0011392107085035. Rodríguez Bustamante, Norberto. 1979. Sociology and Reality in Latin America: The Case of Argentina. International Social Science Journal 31 (1): 86–97. Sidicaro, Ricardo. 1993. Reflexiones sobre la accidentada trayectoria de la sociología en la Argentina. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 517–519: 65–76. Sigal, Silvia. 1991. Intelectuales y poder en Argentina: La década del sesenta. Buenos Aires: Puntosur.

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Tortti, María Cristina, and Germán Soprano. 2004. Materiales para una historia de la sociología en la Argentina (1950-1970). Entrevista a Miguel Murmis. Cuestiones de Sociología 2: 197–245. Turner, Stephen. 2014. American Sociology. From Pre-Disciplinary to Post-­ Normal. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pilot. Verón, Eliseo. 1974. Imperialismo, lucha de clases y conocimiento: 25 Años de sociología en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Tiempo Contemporáneo. Wainerman, Catalina. 2015. La trastienda de la investigación social. Acerca de la 'ñata contra el vidrio'. Ciencia e Investigación 3 (1): 110–123.

3 Expansion, Politicization, and the Emergence of a “National Sociology” (1966–1974)

Abstract  Although in 1966 a new military government promoted an ideological “cleansing” within public universities, politicization proved to be unstoppable. While “scientific sociology” found shelter in private research institutes, preserved from students’ attacks, a new faction within UBA was born, the so-called cátedras nacionales (national chairs). With a plebeian and belligerent style, they denounced value neutrality and called on fellow sociologists to take sides, the sides being “national and social liberation”, which in Argentina they identified with (a revolutionary reappraisal of ) Peronism or “imperial domination”. Works by Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Bolivar, and Perón became major intellectual sources for a new “national sociology”, which explicitly defended the essayistic style neglected by “scientific sociology”. As extreme politicization expanded student enrolments, it also fueled bitter controversies among new and old factions within the discipline. Heated debate revolved around funders, applied sociology, and the potential uses of empirical information by the “oppressive” elites and the state. Keywords  Politicization • “National sociology” • Rejection of applied sociology • José Nun • Marginality project © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_3

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A Purge with Unintended Consequences In 1966 another military coup took place. On this occasion, the new government did not present itself as temporary. According to General Juan Carlos Onganía, the new president, increasing social and economic unrest, along with the alleged weakness of civilian governments, required lasting authoritarian rule. In his account, the risks were not minor ever since the Cuban Revolution had showed that Communism was a real threat in Latin America. Congress was correspondingly dissolved and political activities banned. Tacitly drawing on Franco’s Spain as a model, the new authorities promised economic prosperity and political stability as the result of developmentalist policies and moral and social discipline. Not surprisingly, the universities, which the military saw as centers of subversion and agitation, were among their first targets. Autonomy and self-government were suppressed along with student representation. After a violent repression of protests at UBA, where some authorities and students had  occupied buildings, a massive wave of resignations followed within the professoriate (Buchbinder 2004).1 Although the Department of Sociology was among the most affected—of the twenty-eight professors only four were able to remain (Kratochwill 1970)—the program was not closed.2 While those identified with “scientific sociology” were removed (and had to find shelter in private research institutes like the CSC), teaching posts were given to a mixed group of Catholic and conservative scholars with close ties to the new university authorities. Some were sociólogos de cátedra who took advantage of the new political situation to set a foot in a previously “restricted area”; others did not even have a significant record within the discipline. In the eyes of the military, the recruitment of a staff who support the new government, along with

 More than 1300 UBA professors left or were dismissed (Buchbinder 2004).  As “scientific sociology” was well connected within the international sociological community, the events did not go unnoticed. In the context of the International Sociological Association (ISA) congress held in Evian, a telegram was addressed to the new Argentinean president in which the elite of world sociology asked him to review his actions. Among many others, the note was signed by such figures as Richard Bendix, Seymour Lipset, Talcott Parsons, Edward Shills, Raymond Aron, Samuel Eisenstadt, and Gino Germani (García-Bouza and Verón 1967). 1 2

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permanent surveillance by police officers, should suffice to restore “pedagogical order”. While in general students and instructors (who had managed to survive the purge) did not give a warm welcome to the new staff—whom they referred to as “regime sociologists”—there were two newcomers who would soon appeal to them: Justino O’Farrell (1924–1981), a priest who had pursued sociological studies at the University of California, and Gonzalo Cárdenas (1936–1985), a social historian trained at the University of Louvain. These scholars had been teaching sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA for its acronym in Spanish) and were active in the growing faction within local Catholicism which, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, was shifting to the left. Much to everyone’s surprise, not only did O’Farrell and Cárdenas criticize the new government, they also questioned functionalism as a “conservatory” and “imperialist” theory. As their courses became extremely popular and multiplied (in contrast with those offered by more conservative colleagues), and as a growing body of instructors was recruited to deal with the demands of students, a new faction was consolidated among local sociology: the self-described cátedras nacionales (national chairs). This faction was an expression of the broader process of radicalization which, despite the efforts of the military, acted upon the intellectual and cultural fields. In effect, far from paralyzing political activity and unrest, the suppression of political parties contributed to the politicization of other institutions and spheres. As a consequence, a myriad of painters, actors, scientists, writers, as well as social scientists increasingly converged in the defense of the primacy of politics and the subordination of any “professional” status to straightforward activism (Sigal 1991). For many sociologists, as those identified with the cátedras nacionales, intellectual heroes as C.  Wright Mills started to seem outmoded and were replaced by others who had engaged in “real” action. Among the most celebrated were Algerian revolutionary activist Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) whose The Wretched of the Earth published in Spanish in 1963 was praised as a bible and Colombian sociologist Camilo Torres (1929–1966), a priest who had decided to abandon “scientific sociology” to go (and die) fighting for the insurgent guerrillas.

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Everything Is Political The hallmark of the cátedras nacionales was politicization. For them, the most common “academic” tasks, such as conceptual controversies, teaching strategies, or decisions on Department staffing, were all essentially and predominantly “political” and should be treated as such. For them, there was no “objective reality” from which scientists should gather their data to base agreements; “social reality” was actually the (changing) product of the struggles of collective subjects (“classes” and “nations”); and as neither autonomy nor neutrality were possible, it urged sociologists to take sides: either the sociologists were in favor of “national and social liberation” or against it. Knowledge was necessary for action, but against what they scornfully depicted as “illuminism”, they contended that it was not the product of the work of social scientists but emerged organically from the “people” and the “poor” in their “struggles for liberation”. As Roberto Carri (1940–1977), one of the most prolific writers within this faction, stated, as a detached science, sociology was no more than a “smoke screen that hides the political dependence of every social phenomenon” (Carri 1968b). Whether willingly or not, every sociologist and local current of thought was thus partisan, and it was the cátedras nacionales’ job to reveal whose side they were on. Thus, if Germani and his followers were denounced as “conservative” and intellectually dependent, because their “functionalist” approach neglected conflict, sociologists inspired by Marxism were rejected for their allegedly “dogmatic” (and as a matter of fact “imported”) approach that prevented them from seeing that in “Third World” countries like Argentina, the main contradiction accounting for social dynamics was not the one between capitalists and workers, but the one between imperial (namely, the United States) and exploited nations.3 Thus, for the cátedras, both factions, despite their differences, equally served the status quo as they were “antinational” sociologies. And worse, they were “anti-­ Peronist” sociologies.  Besides, revolution’s chances had moved from the “north” to “south” as workers in developed nations were no longer revolutionaries since they had been included in consumer society and, worse, had become partners in imperialistic oppression (Carri 1968a). 3

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In effect, cátedras nacionales’ criticism was not offered from a vague leftwing nationalistic stance. Far from it, following a broader tendency within leftist activism and the intellectual field in Argentina, their members had become enthusiastic Peronists who presented their work in universities as part of a bigger movement—which by that time comprised workers, unions, and a growing cast of young activists—fighting against the military government to return the exiled leader to power.4 For them, if sociologists wanted to cooperate with radical social change and the end of oppression, there was no question: “the engagement with people’s and anti-imperialist struggles in the present situation of our country […] must be done within the national Peronist movement under the direction of the leader of the Argentine people, General Juan Domingo Perón” (Carri et al. 1970). Some, like Cárdenas, went so far as to say that, like the proletariat and Marxism in nineteenth-century Europe, Peronism might offer a new “epistemological approach” which, albeit unsystematic, could be a vantage point to produce actual critical and non-dependent sociology (Cárdenas 1969). As it may be seen, the distance from “scientific sociology” was such that, in this case, Peronism was no longer an object for the discipline to study but a favorable position from which to produce knowledge. The cátedras nacionales felt themselves to be part of a revolutionary movement and were not afraid of claiming this: a “people’s social science” was in order. Not surprisingly, along with some more traditional materials, mandatory course literature became populated by works by Simón Bolívar, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and, of course, Perón. As it is possible to see, within a couple of years, the fences laboriously established by “scientific sociology” to secure a niche for the discipline were torn down. Of course, the broad climate of politicization affecting intellectual circles and universities was one important ingredient to the story. The other was the growing influence of an ever-increasing student  The emergence of a “new left” in Argentina was connected to a general reappraisal of Peronism in which traditional views depicting it as a local version of Fascism were replaced by others which, drawing of Perón’s nationalistic vein and his defense of workers’ rights, presented it as a part of the national liberation movements that spread out after WWII. Workers’ permanent (and surprising) adherence to Perón, even when his political faction had been banned, refuted leftist activists and intellectuals’ illusions about a turn in local proletariats to socialism. This situation was a major force for their new approach to Peronism. 4

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body. If between 1967 and 1969 there were 500 new students per year, by 1970 the number rose to 1000 (Rodríguez Bustamante 1979). Reacting to this, the cátedras nacionales promoted more horizontal classes and “collective exams”, while explicitly rejecting professional jargon as “elitist”. As Rubinich noted, “the relationship with peers could be less important than the approval of the masses of students” (Rubinich 1999, p. 67). And indeed, fulfilling students’ expectations was fundamental to securing their niche within UBA, as the authorities of the Faculty, who were in line with national government, were certainly not fond of the cátedras nacionales’ radicalness.5 When in 1971, UBA’s authorities finally established an open contest for teaching posts (concursos docentes) which could result in the dismissal of the members of the cátedras nacionales, they published a declaration in which they, far from recognizing the authority of dean and the selection committee which was to evaluate the candidates for the jobs, presented their students (along with the Peronist movement) as the only “legitimate judges” of their work (Carri et  al. 1970). Correspondingly, most of the members of the cátedras nacionales refused to participate in the contest and consequently lost their posts. Only O’Farrell and Carri decided to compete. In the first case the contest was declared void even though O’Farrell was the only contestant; in the latter the committee rejected Carri and chose another candidate6 (Burgos 2004). If a traditional academic career was not an easy option, as the general political climate changed and a return of Peronism to power became increasingly likely, the choice of a political career became more attractive for these sociologists. And, indeed, harassed by irresistible social turmoil, the emergence of urban and rural guerrilla warfare, and a succession of major uprisings in different cities, the military regime decided to restore democracy and allow the Peronist party to participate in elections. In what was seemingly a pre-revolutionary situation, the return of Perón had become surprisingly acceptable for the military, and in 1973 the veteran leader was finally elected. The enthusiastic activism of the cátedras  Students were also important as readers of the outlets in which they channeled their ideas. Journals like Antropología del 3er Mundo or Envido, in contrast with the publications of “scientific sociology” which depended on external funding, were entirely supported by their consumers. 6  The committee chose Juan Carlos Portantiero, a quite prestigious Marxist sociologist (see Chap. 5). 5

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nacionales would not be unrewarded. As the new government promoted a self-depicted “cultural revolution” in universities, they were called upon to resume their tasks in the Sociology Department. Thus, after a new purge, many members of the cátedras nacionales were able to come back to their posts at UBA, which was now renamed the “National and People’s University of Buenos Aires”. What is more, some of them were appointed to important managerial positions. O’Farrell was named as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, and this was joyfully celebrated by students; others became heads of departments and new institutes. As it may be anticipated, pollicization followed, reaching its climax when many high-profile Peronist activists (from rebel military and filmmakers, to veteran politicians) with no specific records within the discipline were recruited in the Sociology Department as new professors. While the number of new students increased by 50% in 1974, reaching 1500 (Rodríguez Bustamante 1979), a good many activists, who were not interested in getting a diploma but were attracted to the debates that took place in an institution clearly committed to social change, packed the classrooms. Of course, this wider audience came at a price: sociology as an autonomous intellectual enterprise had finally been dissolved into politics. The experience was nevertheless very brief. After Perón died in 1974, far-rightwing allies in his (catch-all) coalition became stronger in government and promoted a violent ideological “cleansing” in universities, which included murders7 and terrorist attacks. Not surprisingly, the program of sociology was closed.

 arxist Sociology and the Controversy M on “Imperial” Funding “Scientific sociology” remained in general indifferent to the attacks of the cátedras nacionales. Working in private research institutes like the CSC which became more important after the latest intervention at UBA, their main audiences were their colleagues, whether in Argentina or abroad,  Silvio Frondizi, a prestigious Marxist intellectual who taught at the Sociology Department, was killed. 7

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and the foundations which funded their work. Their production was channeled mainly in the form of research reports and papers in such journals as the Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología (RLS). Taking advantage of their international connections, these sociologists also published in foreign outlets. In general, they continued defending a sharp divide between “science” and “ideology”, along with empirical research as the standard for good sociology. While they enjoyed extremely attractive working conditions, they saw politicization as fostered by cátedras nacionales as a form of intellectual “barbarism”. But between “scientific sociology” and the cátedras nacionales there was still a third—and intermediary—faction. Defining itself as “Marxist sociology”, they vindicated political engagement, while they endorsed “science” as different and non-reducible to politics. The members of the cátedras nacionales, they acknowledged, were right in rejecting value neutrality as a disguise for conservatism as no neutrality was possible in class and oppressed societies. However, as Eliseo Verón (1935–2014), a young sociologist who had got a PhD in France under the guidance of Claude Lévi-Strauss, contended, there was no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater: empirical systematical research and international mainstream sociology were essential elements in making a real science “at the service of Socialism” (Verón 1974, p. 42). Ambiguous stances like this stemmed from the attempt to simultaneously place a wager in the increasingly dissociated games which the local sociological field was differentiating: professionalization and politicization. Many Marxist sociologists, as with the members of “scientific sociology”, had done graduate studies abroad, had developed significant networks with international institutions and colleagues, and worked in the private research institutes. At the same time, as with the members of the cátedras nacionales, they aspired to make a name within the growing audience of students and in the broader radicalizing intellectual field. Their publishing strategies are quite telling on this: while they contributed to local and foreign scientific journals, they were equally active within the wide range of political and cultural left-wing magazines that blossomed in the 1960s (Sigal 1991). They wanted to “publish globally” without “perishing locally”, and vice versa (Hanafi 2011). But the deepening differentiation of institutional bases

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and trajectories led to the differentiation of sociological practices and views about what the discipline ought to be. The most bitter arguments between Marxist sociology and the cátedras nacionales revolved around the question of foreign funding. One study, known as the Marginality Project, triggered a major controversy in 1968. The controversy went well beyond the local sociological field, enrolling many intellectuals outside sociology and resounding in such influential Latin American leftwing outlets as the Cuban Granma and the Uruguayan Marcha. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the project sought to study the life conditions and political orientations of the poor and paupers in different countries of Latin America. The idea of the sponsor was to produce empirical information that could help governments in dealing with those living in growing urban shantytowns or in very backward (almost feudal) rural areas. Money was not a problem: the initial budget was of around 200,000 dollars, albeit it was partially reduced when two host institutions left.8 The director was José Nun (1936–), a young sociologist who had done graduate studies in France at Science Po and later served as a visiting professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of California. Yet while fostering international connections and amassing significant academic credentials, Nun had remained active within  the local intellectual field where, thanks to his interventions in extremely popular journals for Marxist activists, he had made a name as a critical and “socialist” sociologist. Controversy surrounding the project (and accusations of imperialist influence) was not unforeseeable. On the one hand, the study of those excluded populations of which many, under the influence of Guevarism, Fanonism, and Maoism, were expecting to revolt was certainly a sensitive issue. To illustrate this point it is worth noting that in 1968 Roberto Carri published a best-seller book on the adventures of a “social bandit” who made his living by kidnapping landowners and robbing banks in a backward province. Fiercely persecuted until he was finally ambushed, he had managed to deal with local police thanks to the support of the poor  They were the Center for Economic and Social Development and the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (DESAL and ILPES for their acronyms in Spanish). 8

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and pauper peasants who, according to Carri, praised him as a “social avenger”. Such events, which traditional proletariat-oriented leftwing parties and intellectuals had ignored, were of major importance for Carri since, in his eyes, the revolutionary potential of urban workers was eroded because of welfare policies and reformist unions. The spark lighting the revolution had now moved to the interior of the country and lay beneath those who, while still lacking clear political consciousness, were the victims of the crudest forms of oppression, and were  thus the new “total proletariat” (Carri 1968a).9 On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, the Marginality Project was launched soon after the Camelot Project scandal showed US intelligence and defense bodies’ involvement with the promotion of social science and the funding of a program devoted to predicting and controlling the appearance of internal conflicts and insurrectional movements in peripheral countries.10 As a matter of fact, it was that peculiar context that accounted for the otherwise odd selection of someone who, like Nun, was a young sociologist with no experience with “big studies” and managerial tasks. For Ford officials, hiring a Marxist scholar was a way of dealing with the “Camelot syndrome” (Plotkin 2015). It did not take long for the denounces of “sociological espionage” to appear. Neither the Marxist theoretical framework and jargon of the study, nor Nun’s detailed accounting of the conditions of autonomy he had managed to impose on the donors,11 appeased his critics. Albeit rather oddly as he conceded that US funding was an “integral part of a global strategy of imperial penetration” (Nun 1969b), Nun basically tried to prove that he was using—in a Machiavellian way—US funding to denounce US domination and question imperialism. After all, he stressed, “Marcuse wrote One-Dimensional Man funded by the Rockefeller Foundation [and] Paul Baran was full professor at the aristocratic Stanford University”. Why then should Latin American researchers say no to  The book was published by a small printing house owned by two Peronist and activist lawyers.  With more than six million American dollars and launched in 1964, this program was secretly funded by the Pentagon and the US Defense Department. After denunciations and a big public scandal, the project was canceled but its resonances would endure (Navarro 2011). 11  Not only did Nun choose the theoretical approach, he also picked the research team and even the advisory committee who was intended to supervise his work. Drawing on his dense international networks, the young sociologist proposed Eric Hobsbawm, Alain Touraine, and David Apter. 9

10

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foreign funding when no local alternative sources were available? (Nun [1968] 2017). Also, in a more straightforwardly political vein, Nun addressed an “Open letter” at UBA’s students of sociology in which he made it clear that he had talked about the project with, and got the blessing of, many political leftwing groups and unions. Although he was not a Peronist, he had even managed to meet Perón and gotten his approval. The critics remained impervious. For them, Ford Foundation was a “new intelligence agency” devoted to fight against “national liberation movements”. If their officials were hiring Marxist scholars, it was only because they wanted to cunningly disguise their real intentions. Indeed, what they really cared for was the data the US government could get (and not theoretical debates regarding Functionalism versus Marxism) to support their imperial plans. Some went so far as to say that “napalm and helicopters are equivalents to the survey” (Goldstein 1969) and others, like Cárdenas, simply depicted Nun as a “sepoy” who was betraying his fellow citizens. In his defense, Nun was clever enough to note that if crude information was the problem, no sociological inquiries, whether they were funded by foreign or local institutions (or not funded at all), would be desirable, as the circulation of their results could always be endowed the oppressors with new insights on how to improve their dominance. Making fun of what he depicted as an “obscurantist” attitude, he pointed out that if his critics were right: Che Guevara should not have published Guerrilla Warfare; nor Lenin his sophisticated analysis on the political orientations of workers in different industrial branches; nor Mao his sharp observations on the potential activism of diverse rural and urban groups. (Nun 1969a, p. 11)12

As suggested above, Nun’s concern for his reputation as a radical intellectual before the students and leftwing activists, along with his defense of “professional standards” in the conduct of systematic empirical research, was representative of the two-faced position-taking of those  Supporting his colleague, Verón went further: “if you are a Marxist, and you are convinced of Marxist’s scientific validity, don’t think of study anything because your work may be used by imperialism! [Or do study but] do not released your results […] Marx was right in writing Das Kapital, but he made a mistake when he decided to publish it” (Verón 1974, p. 74). 12

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who wanted to play, not without clear difficulties, the game of political activism without giving up mainstream sociology and the making of career as a full-time academic.13 Of course, Ford officials were neither pleased with getting bad press nor with Nun’s comments on the Foundation. As results were delayed and controversies increased, the project was finally canceled (Plotkin 2015). Despite quarrels about funding and imperialism, Nun’s ideas on marginality have remained influential notions in the thinking of Latin American social problems up to this day. Based on a sophisticated discussion of Marx’s ideas in Grundrisse and Das Kapital, Nun rejected two convergent (and Functionalist) views accounting for the persistence of social exclusion in the region. One the one hand, he discarded those analysis which depicted marginality as temporary; as a transient stage that would be overcome by the creation of more and better jobs brought about by the expansion of capitalism. On the other, Nun opposed those who, from an ameliorative point of view, explained marginality as the product of individuals’ lack of the moral dispositions needed to be usefully incorporated into the modern economy, implying that education and social work were the solution. In both accounts, Nun contended, the real causes of the problem were overlooked. Opposing both optimistic and sort of conservative views, he explained that the existence of the socially excluded was caused by the weaknesses of a dependent economy like the Latin American, which was unable to absorb all those wanting to work, resulting in the consolidation of a growing “overpopulation”. For this group, he coined the concept of “marginal mass” and contrasted it to the classic notion of the “industrial reserve army”. While Marx had focused on the deleterious effects of the unemployed on salaries and working conditions, the marginal mass served no purpose for the capitalists. As labor markets in Latin America were strongly segmented, and workers were not homogeneous (as in Marx’s accounts of English capitalism), replaceability diminished: those in the modern sector of the economy were unaffected by those in the margins (Nun [1969] 2020). Thus, developmentalist policies promoting capitalist investments would not  The main results of the unfinished study appeared on a special number of the RLS which included a paper by Hobsbawm. 13

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offer a solution to the region and to social injustice. As Nun himself later noted (Nun 2000), the concept of marginal mass anticipated such notions as “underclass” and “disaffiliation” created in the 1990s to tackle with increasing lack of jobs, underemployment, and labor instability in United States and Europe. It is not by chance that the debate on marginality and surplus population began in Latin America, as serious difficulties in absorbing the available labor force were present even in the best moments of the postwar industrialization process.

Sociology as a Consulting Profession? As the number of graduates at UBA and other schools increased, debates on the constitution of sociology as a consulting profession became more heated. By 1970 there were almost 1000 graduates (Kratochwill 1970). A note on “The craft of sociologist” published in a popular magazine pictured the situation in these terms: The perspectives which Argentina offers to a fresh graduate in sociology are certainly not appealing […] Sometimes, sociologists are poorly paid teachers at universities; other times, they are in charge of a set of tasks with no clear limits at public agencies [or] big companies -comprising from the conduction of surveys to the application of tests-. Only the elite of Argentinean sociologists is devoted to research. Employed by private national and foreign institutes, they do big studies on some aspects of Argentinean social life. (Confirmado 1969, p. 16)

Confronted with this difficult situation, there were, broadly speaking, two contrasting perspectives among sociologists, one defending applied sociology, in line with Germani’s view (as seen on Ch. 1), and the other rejecting any role for sociologists in the system of professions. For the promoters of sociology as a consultant profession, opportunities were plentiful, but they had to be actively pursued. As it was the case with other professionals, sociologists needed to knock on the doors of private companies, cooperatives, unions, and state agencies, and enthusiastically offer their “novel” expertise. If they recognized that those institutions

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might still not know that they were in need of sociological advice, they were clear that it was sociologists who needed to promote their discipline as essential to everyone who was interested in “rational” (and based-on-­ data) decision-making (Di Tella 1967). Even more, although state officials had not always been very enthusiastic about the “new” discipline, as the intervention of 1966 attested, state agencies should be the main target of these promotional activities. According to Manuel Mora y Araujo (1937–2017), a young sociologist who had done master’s studies at FLACSO and worked at Bariloche Foundation, a new private research institute, “sociology’s opportunity to become a useful instrument to change society” depended on a cooperative relationship with the state (Mora y Araujo 1971). Some went so far as to contend that “real significant scientific progress” would only come from “applied sociology”. Drawing on Kuhn’s vocabulary, Torcuato Di Tella (1929–2016), a close associate of Germani who had got a master’s degree at Columbia University, stated that ivory-tower scholars were never the bearers of “scientific revolutions” because for such great shifts to take place, a “scientific tradition” had had to match a “social practical need”. His examples were not minor or humble: in his account, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Keynesianism would not have been possible had Freud, Marx, and Keynes remained indifferent toward mental suffering, workers’ exploitation, or economic depression (Di Tella 1967). Without such a connection to the problems of society, self-referentiality and futile research agendas would be much likely, and effects would be extremely deleterious. Devoid of extended publics and clienteles, sociology would lack legitimation and the material resources that came with it, which made it so dependent of foreign funding (Mora y Araujo 1971). Of course, for sociologists to be hired by different institutions they had to remain indifferent to politics and ideological debates (at least during their workday). Against the promoters of pollicization, sociology should remain neutral: There is a tendency to believe that if sociology can be useful to something is to the defense of the status quo. This belief, widespread in the “left”, is as much a prejudiced as the belief spread in the “right” that sociology is nothing more than a pretext to produce subversive mentalities. I think sociology can be useful in serving the status quo as well as reformist and revolution-

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ary goals […] Sociology can serve to predict the appearance of guerrilla to better control them, but it can be equally useful to the guerrilla in establishing whether their objectives are plausible or absurd. (Mora y Araujo 1971, p. 134)14

Not surprisingly, such views were fiercely attacked by members of the cátedras nacionales and Marxist sociologists. The heart of the matter was that neutrality was not possible for these factions. Thus, what a sociologist could do when hired by an employer was largely determined by the employer’s needs. Those who had money to employ sociologists were the elites and the State that represented their interests, thus any applied activity would be oriented against the oppressed. The idea of sociology as a consulting “profession”, with a deontology of its own, was no more than a disguise to hide “sellout sociologists”. “Professionalization means obeying the orders of the masters” (Carri et al. 1970, p. 6). Verón made the point clear in his response to Mora y Araujo: The sociologist [is called to leave academia and] offer his services in a broader market. Sociological knowledge can benefit everyone [it is said] as it allows to implement any policy and any ideology. The sociologist should leave his business card, hoping to get a job. [But, actually, the] affirmation of sociology as a technology that is beyond the ideological struggles and that anyone can buy [makes the sociologist] a technocrat who openly confesses that, when speaking of “social change”, he is not thinking of a particular kind of change. Doing so could scare many potential customers. (Verón 1974, p. 64)

If working for a private company amounted to fostering capitalist exploitation, working for a US philanthropic foundation was equal, as was seen, to becoming a handmaid of the empire. Yet, working for a state agency, even if it was within one pertaining to the “left hand” of the state, was no more rewarding. Sociologists might in this case relate to the  The remark on guerrilla warfare was not naïve. By that time, Ernesto Che Guevara had recently been killed in the Bolivian jungle to the indifference of local peasants and the general dismay of those in the leftwing intellectual and activist circles. More immediately, local analogous projects in Argentina had equally proved disastrous. 14

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exploited and the poor, but far from advancing their agenda and interests, they could only offer a palliative whose real intention was to avoid social conflict. Thus, what the promoters of applied sociology defended as an expertise able to increase (instrumental) rationality, was, for their critics, no more than an “oppression technology” (Carri 1968a). In these accounts, as the state had no fissures, sociologists ought to keep their distance. “Servility”, what Burawoy (2005) considered as the main (and possible but not necessarily) pathology for applied sociology (or “policy sociology”), was in this view unavoidable. Thus, if sociologists did not want to get their hands dirty, the only legitimate publics for them were those who worked or were interested in a radical transformation of society. But as the poor and paupers did not have resources to pay for their services, the problem remained: how could a sociologist make a living as a sociologist? In the most extreme views, that was not actually a problem: sociologists, like any revolutionary activist, ought to be ready to share their oppressed fellow citizens’ living conditions.15 In other, more moderate views, the question remained unsolved. Neglect of professional matters largely mirrored students’ expectations and was indeed fueled by it. According to a survey conducted by a popular magazine in 1971 which questioned fifty students, a large majority stated that much more than a diploma in sociology, they wanted to become “revolutionaries” (Panorama 1971). On that same note, a young professor at UBA referred: I think that the professional role of sociologists is sad enough to deter students from wondering about their professional future [...] Some time ago, a colleague [of UBA] in one of his classes gathered a group of new students and told them that it made no sense that they study sociology because there won’t be good jobs for them. At that moment, one of them stood up and said: “Actually, we did not come here to be sociologists; we come here to make the revolution”. (Panorama 1971)

Millsian criticism of the “bureaucratic ethos” as depicted in The Sociological Imagination was clearly influential. News of student activism  Of course, belligerent discourse coexisted with the need to make a living, and many sociologists were employed by state agencies, some private companies, and (the then nascent) market research institutes. 15

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in France and the United States were also important. The first number of Antropología del 3er Mundo, the main outlet of the cátedras nacionales,  which appeared in November 1968, translated a recent article by Daniel Cohn-Bendit published in the French journal Esprit. While the article entitled “Sociologists for What?” denounced those who offered their professional services as “watchdogs” at the service of the capitalist order, it stated that students’ disobedience was a reaction against the “repressive” nature of the “sociological profession” and the “social function” that the “system” was preparing them for (Cohn-Bendit 1968). Martin Nicolaus’ famous speech at the American Sociological Association (ASA) conference in 1968 was also quickly translated. Its attack on elite sociologists as “house-servants of the corporate establishment”, whose “professional eyes” were on the “down people” while his “professional palm” was “stretched toward the up people”, was also much attuned to local controversies (Nikolaus 1970).

“ National Sociology” and the Vindication of the Essay As the anti-imperialist mood spread, “scientific sociology” increasingly came to be seen by most radicalized sociologists and students as part of an “imperial penetration”. The massive import of ideas, the dependence on US funding, and the neglect in toto of local intellectual traditions (as seen on Ch. 1) were evidence of its alienated—and dependent—character. Against this, as more and more sociologists and students contended, a more locally oriented social science was in order. “National liberation” required “mental liberation”. Once more, the cátedras nacionales were the most radical and engaged in the defense (and production) of a “national sociology” based on the essayistic national approach which Germani and his collaborators had deliberately ignored. Thus, along with the works of political leaders, the mandatory course literature included a massive cast of “national thinkers” who, in much the same way as these sociologists, did not hide their passionate political position-taking and suspicions of the benefits of systematic empirical research.

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As leftist intellectual circles became more and more receptive to Peronism after its fall, the essayistic tradition did not remain unaffected. It was significantly renewed by a set of nationalistic essayists who offered new and appealing long-term accounts of Argentina’s development and the deleterious influence of imperialism. Attuned with a growing politicized public demand for black-and-white narratives, these intellectuals offered stories which delved into colonial times and applied this to the present in which “saints”—all those fighting against British and US empires—and “sinners”—local associates of imperialism—were clearly identified. One of the most influential of these writers was Arturo Jauretche (1901–1974), a Peronist intellectual and famous public figure, who in 1966 published El medio pelo en la sociedad argentina, an examination of the “failed” role of the Argentinean bourgeoisie and its failure to fulfill what was depicted as its historic mission: to lead local industrialization and progress. The book, which in less than a year reached its ninth edition (Carassai 2018), included a polemical subtitle, “notes for a national sociology”, and an introduction in which the author questioned sociology as it was developed by Germani and his collaborators. Written with a simple language, which skillfully combined slang and popular proverbs, the book made it clear that Jauretche was not excluding possible readers by using scientific esoteric jargon. While he did not refrain from using some of the works of “scientific sociology” as was the case with de Ímaz’s Los que mandan (Those Who Rule), he attacked and wryly mocked “professional sociologists” for their naïve credulity with respect to the face-value of supposedly “objective” data. According to him, understanding local society required an in-depth knowledge of the national people, which could emerge only from “personal and rich experience” rather than from any sophisticated and imported methodologies. “The university of life” could not be replaced by fancy diplomas awarded by foreign schools. His criticisms of the survey method were particularly harsh (and a sensitive issue for “scientific sociology” as it was its most characteristic asset). In his funny and sharp style, Jauretche warned: You may ask any fellow citizen about anything or anyone, and the answer will always be: “Regular”. But the thing is that “regular” may mean “good” or “very good”, but also “bad”! It will be your trained “ear” and your deep

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knowledge of that man -his tone and perhaps some mimic movement-, that will give you the right interpretation of his answer. Yet, such challenging task is not suitable for the inexperience young survey-taker, and even less for the electronic computer. (Jauretche 2016, p. 9)

Given Jauretche’s visibility in the media and intellectual field, his attacks could not go unnoticed by “scientific sociology” and soon a critical review followed in the RLS. The note, which was also extremely sarcastic, was written by Francisco Delich (1937–2016), a young Marxist sociologist who, like Nun, was part of the intermediary faction who defended a more straightforward political engagement which, nevertheless, did not imply a withdrawal from “science”. Delich had pursued graduate studies in France and, at that moment, was a member of the Marginality Project. While he stated that he wished to avoid “sterile conflicts” between “professional sociology” and “parasociology”, Jauretche’s constant “contradictions” and “lack of verifications” had led him to conclude that the book was, in essence, worthless, devoid of any remarkable insight sociologists could draw from (Delich 1967). The reply to this attack was provided by Carri. This was the only time that anyone among the cátedras nacionales contributed to a “scientific sociology” outlet like the RLS. From the very beginning the note set the tone with a quotation to a poem which read: “Enough of intellectual fagotries” (Basta ya de mariconerías ilustradas), followed by complaining about “academic” sociologists’ inability to recognize other forms of knowledge apart from those coming from abroad. For him, works like that of Jauretche, which were based on vast life experience and political engagement, were much more valid for understanding local reality than any systematic imported theory produced to examine other societies (Carri 1968b). To be sure, Jauretche’s remarks against “scientific sociology” were like music in the ears to those who, like the members of the cátedras nacionales, lacked graduate diplomas (awarded abroad) or the funding needed to engage in (quantitative) big studies and were engaged mostly in the production of political essays whose rigor might be sacrificed, as Carri acknowledged in his study of social banditry, to the goal of political impact (Carri 1968a, p.12).

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The rift was sharp: the vindication of local intellectual traditions of thought as promoted by “national sociology” was not done with the idea of integrating their contributions to the latest developments in the discipline produced in the “north”. Confronted with the tension of every peripheral intellectual field, between encouraging a greater openness in order to promote innovation—at the risk of uncritically reproducing foreign ideas—and fostering autonomy grounded on local traditions of thought—at the risk of succumbing to “provincialism”—the choice of the cátedras nacionales was clear. As clear as that of “scientific sociology” but with an opposed orientation. Undoubtedly, criticisms of modernization theory and the rise of dependency theory in Latin America (Beigel 2019) encouraged the search for alternative intellectual sources and the neglect of mainstream international sociology. In Brazil, for example, the naïve importation of ideas— which was insidiously referred to as “canned sociology” (Ramos 2020)—was also the target of harsh attacks, which resulted in an extended reappraisal of its own tradition of local essayists. Yet, in general, this reappraisal did not lead to the rejection of sociology as a “scientific” and empirically based discipline. Instead, drawing on essayism was frequently seen as a path to avoid the dependent and passive reception of foreign ideas and a means of fostering a more autonomous research agenda: a source of inspiration for a sociology which did not give up on mainstream standards. In the case of the cátedras nacionales in Argentina, on the contrary, the lack of funding, along with the assumption of politicized students as the main audience, was crucial for the production of a version of “national sociology” which neglected systematic research and defended an essayistic style of work. Not unexpectedly, polarization followed. Thus, while Mora y Araujo acknowledged the deleterious effects of “cultural dependency” on local sociology, he did not hesitate to recognize that: “if the alternative was to be formulated in extreme terms between cultural dependency and ‘scientific illiteracy’, I would choose dependency” (Mora y Araujo 1971, p. 131).

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References Beigel, Fernanda. 2019. Latin American Sociology: A Centennial Regional Tradition. In Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, ed. Fernanda Beigel. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Buchbinder, Pablo. 2004. Historia de las universidades argentinas. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Burawoy, Michael. 2005. For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review 70 (1): 4–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240507000102. Burgos, Raúl. 2004. Los gramscianos argentinos. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Carassai, Sebastián. 2018. Ser o parecer: Arturo Jauretche y el ‘medio pelo’ de la sociedad argentina. In La Argentina como problema, ed. Carlos Altamirano and Adrián Gorelik, 283–297. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Cárdenas, Gonzalo. 1969. El peronismo y la cuña neoimperial. In El Peronismo. Buenos Aires: Carlos Pérez Editor. Carri, Roberto. 1968a. Isidro Velázquez. Formas prerevolucionarias de la violencia. Buenos Aires: Sudestada. ———. 1968b. Un sociólogo de medio pelo. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 4 (1): 127–131. Carri, Roberto, Juan Pablo Franco, Jorge Carpio, Susana Checa, Alcira Argumedo, Gunnar Olson, Pedro Krotsch, et  al. 1970. Sociología: instrumento de conocimiento y de lucha. Cristianismo y Revolución 4 (22): 6–7. Cohn-Bendit, Daniel. 1968. Para qué sociólogos? Antropología 3er Del Mundo 1 (1): 13–17. Confirmado. 1969. El oficio del sociólogo, September 17. Delich, Francisco. 1967. Arturo Jauretche. El medio pelo en la sociedad argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 3 (2): 302–307. García-Bouza, Jorge, and Eliseo Verón. 1967. Epílogo de una crónica: la situación de la sociología en Argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 3 (1): 91–94. Goldstein, Daniel. 1969. Sociólogos argentinos aceitan el engranaje. Marcha, January 10, 15. Hanafi, Sari. 2011. University Systems in the Arab East: Publish Globally and Perish Locally vs Publish Locally and Perish Globally. Current Sociology 59 (3): 291–309.

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Jauretche, Arturo. 2016. El medio pelo en la sociedad argentina. Buenos Aires: Corregidor. Kratochwill, Germán. 1970. Estado actual de las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología 4 (1): 167–176. Mora y Araujo, Manuel. 1971. La sociedad y la praxis Sociológica. Desarrollo Económico 11 (41): 125–143. https://doi.org/10.2307/3466187. Navarro, Juan José. 2011. Cold War in Latin America: The Camelot Project (1964-1965) and the Political and Academic Reactions of the Chilean Left. Comparative Sociology 10 (5): 807–825. https://doi.org/10.116 3/156913311X599089. Nikolaus, Martin. 1970. Advertencia a la convención de la Asociación Sociológica Norteamericana. In Ciencias Sociales: Ideología y Realidad Nacional, 27–31. Buenos Aires: Tiempo Contemporáneo. Nun, José. 1969a. La polémica sobre el "Proyecto Marginalidad". Marcha, February 28, 18–19. ———. 1969b. Las brujas que caza el Señor Goldstein. Marcha, January 17, 15. ———. 2000. The End of Work and the ‘Marginal Mass’ Thesis. Latin American Perspectives 27 (1): 6–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X0002700102. ———. 2017. A 50 Años del Proyecto Marginalidad: Carta a los estudiantes de Sociología. Aesthethika 13 (2): 19–33. ———. 2020. José Nun (Argentina) Marginality and Social Exclusion. In Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, ed. Fernanda Beigel. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Panorama. 1971. La sociología a trompadas, May 18, 38–45. Plotkin, Mariano Ben. 2015. US Foundations, Cultural Imperialism and Transnational Misunderstandings: The Case of the Marginality Project. Journal of Latin American Studies 47 (1): 65–92. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022216X14001473. Ramos, Alberto Guerreiro. 2020. A Critical Introduction to Brazilian Sociology: Canned Sociology versus Dynamic Sociology. In Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, ed. Fernanda Beigel, 47–56. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Rodríguez Bustamante, Norberto. 1979. Sociology and Reality in Latin America: The Case of Argentina. International Social Science Journal 31 (1): 86–97. Rubinich, Lucas. 1999. Los sociólogos intelectuales: Cuatro notas sobre la sociología en los años sesenta. Apuntes de Investigación 4: 1. Sigal, Silvia. 1991. Intelectuales y poder en Argentina: La década del sesenta. Buenos Aires: Puntosur.

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Tella, Torcuato Di. 1967. La sociología en América Latina. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología1 3 (1): 84–90. Verón, Eliseo. 1974. Imperialismo, lucha de clases y conocimiento: 25 años de sociología en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Tiempo Contemporáneo.

4 Authoritarianism, Censorship, and the Retreat of Sociology (1974–1983)

Abstract  By the mid-1970s a violent turn to the right in national politics cruelly cancelled hopes for emancipatory social change. The new authorities intervened in public universities which they depicted as tumultuous “Soviets”. While many sociological programs were closed, numerous sociologists had to go into exile. Although UBA’s school remained open, an unprepared (and opportunistic) host of teachers were appointed. Private research institutes could continue their activities, as “scientific sociology” was generously funded by foreign foundations. However, given constant state surveillance, they were forced to cultivate an extremely low profile. Thus, without the chance to address local publics, an “enclave” orientation followed in which sociologists kept quite connected to international mainstream but were unable to circulate their works locally. In contrast to other international authoritarian experiences, where sociology was mobilized as a source of policy information, a deleterious phase of de-institutionalization followed. Not surprisingly, attempts at promoting applied sociology were rarely fruitful. Keywords  Dictatorship • De-institutionalization • Enclave sociology • Academic dependency • Applied sociology © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_4

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State Repression and De-institutionalization The return to democracy and constitutional rights in 1973 was brief. Economic difficulties, along with insurmountable contradictions within the Peronist movement, resulted in an ungovernable situation. The ecumenical approach Perón had followed in his eighteen-year exile to add supporters proved hard to manage once in office. His sudden death in 1974 aggravated the situation, and violent conflicts between those promoting revolution and those trying to prevent it followed. The new president, Perón’s inexperienced widow, favored the conservative factions and tried to violently restore “order” with the support of the military, but also of far-right paramilitary groups. Still, a new coup took place in 1976 in what was depicted as a chaotic situation, which included frequent terrorist attacks, workers’ unrest in factories, and a record inflation rate of almost 200%. According to the military, and to the civilians supporting them, extreme measures were in order. Suppressing guerilla and political activism was only the first step. Putting an end to the empowerment of unions, which had been favored by industrialization policies since the 1940s, was equally important. A re-foundational program was thus embraced in which neoliberal policies, as were fostered in Chile after 1973, sought to “modernize” the economy and control inflation, while undermining social welfare policies, weakening the working classes, and benefiting the economic elites. To achieve this, no efforts would be spared. Censorship was reestablished, the congress was dissolved, and political activities forbidden. But more importantly, state terrorism was liberally embraced. Illegal murders and disappearances were massive: more than 30,000 people were slain. A systematic plan of torture and killings, which was inspired by French Army activities during the Algerian War, took place within a dense network of clandestine detention centers. Union leaders and workers along with political left-wing activists were the main targets. Terror took over as most basic human rights were regularly violated. The arbitrary power of state agents became a pervasive menace. Once again, there was an intervention into public universities, and “anti-Communist” ideological cleansing followed. The first purges, it is

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worth noting, were promoted after the turn to the right of the Peronist administration. In the context of violent internecine wars, a self-declared Fascist sympathizer was put at the head of the UBA. The new rector did not take long to restore the school traditional name—he took off the word “popular” and, with the support of police officers and paramilitary nationalistic groups, promoted a violent persecution of left-wing activists among the professoriate and the student body. At the same time, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL), a Thomist priest, who had been appointed as its dean, did not hesitate to take advantage of his esoteric knowledge and, with a censer in his hand, went through the building exorcising the “communist devil” (Buchbinder 2004). When the military took over the government, they jumped on these repressive policies and, while promoting a new purge that made room for their civilian allies, further reinforced surveillance and discipline. Many books pertaining to the social science, especially those by Marxist and anti-imperialistic thinkers, were censored. Book burnings were not infrequent (Invernizzi and Gociol 2010). As part of a reactionary policy aimed at reestablishing a “lost order”, traditional hierarchies between professors and students were fostered. Correspondingly, university self-government, as well as student political activities, was eliminated. As one of the secretaries of Education of the military stated in 1979: “We want an university; not a tumultuous soviet of professors, students and graduates” (quoted in Buchbinder 2016, p. 162). Among the novelties was the reestablishment of entry exams and fees with the intent of reducing the number (and influence) of students. For the first time in UBA’s history, enrollment dropped: if by 1975 there were 507,000 university students, by 1983, when the military left office, there were 416,000 (Cano 1985). Numbers regarding new students are clearer. While in 1974 there were 40,000, by 1977 the number had plummeted to 13,000 (Buchbinder 2004). In the fleeting experience of the National and People’s University of Buenos Aires, it was established that no teacher could parallelly work for a multinational company. As a sign of the change of the times, now the incompatibility was with university management appointments and membership in any political party or union. In that context, as it may be expected, a discipline which had created for itself a notoriously rebellious public image like sociology was severely

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affected. Some of the programs in public universities, like the one in Mendoza and Mar del Plata, were closed, and many sociologists were dismissed from their posts in universities and other public agencies for ideological reasons. Many of them, along with a good number of students, were among the “disappeared” (desaparecidos) (CPS 2006). Roberto Carri, the most prolific member of the cátedras nacionales, was one of them. Others had to go into exile to survive. And although activities in private research institutes, as fostered by “scientific sociology”, were relatively untouched, as they were outside the formal jurisdiction of government officials, they also had to cultivate an extremely low profile. Greater visibility could prompt action—legal or illegal—by a government not inclined to put up with any sort of seemingly opposing discourse. Thus, after the phase of significant growth started in the 1950s in which, as was seen, not without difficulties and sharp reorientations, sociological institutions expanded and the public visibility of the discipline increased, a phase of de-institutionalization and social ostracism followed. Sociology became marginal and public esteem waned, and job opportunities were reduced. Sociologists were unable to overtly discuss their ideas, much less to critically engage in the media and public sphere. The consequences of these years of silence were not minor. Although, as in other latitudes, scholarship tended to render this period as an unproductive impasse (Kirtchik and Heredia 2015), which could be overlooked as insignificant, the material and symbolic degradation suffered by sociological institutions left a deep and lasting mark.

Reorganization and Marginalization of the UBA Program Despite being closed since 1974, the program of sociology of UBA was (surprisingly) reopened in 1977. This was a moment in which the military was engaged in the harshest phase of repression. Of course, the changes in the program were drastic. On the one hand, the Department and Institute were disaffiliated from the FFyL and dismantled. Although it was said that social sciences were too different in epistemology and

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methodology from human sciences and that it was to the benefit of both fields to get a divorce, the truth was that this initiative was aimed at suppressing the weight and influence of the students. The other programs created in 1957, Psychology and Education, were also separated, resulting in a 70% decrease of FFyL students. Political activities were (again) banned. But this time, in contrast with previous military dictatorships, no means were spared in enforcing this order. Police and military officers, usually as undercover agents pretending to be students, regularly surveyed classes and activities (Rodríguez 2015). The teaching staff was (almost) entirely replaced, and no representatives of the most important factions were recruited. For the first time, those affiliated within “scientific” and “Marxist”, as much as those in the cátedras nacionales, were equally excluded from the program. Again, as in 1966, lecturers were mostly recruited among conservative Catholic and right-wing nationalistic intellectual circles. Some of them were resuming their posts after being dismissed in 1973 by the first (and leftist) Peronist interventions. Others, the vast majority, were newcomers. In general, they were lawyers and philosophers who did not have a significant record in sociology and who made a living by taking part-time teaching jobs in different institutions, public and private. There were, however, a couple of sociologists who were specialists in methodology.1 There was also a small group of young sociologists who had recently completed their training (at UBA or one of the Catholic universities) who, without much experience, were happy to start a career in the professoriate. Despite the fact that teaching appointments were part-time, the opportunity was appealing for all of them. In fact, it was their lobbying and contacts with military authorities2 that impeded the otherwise very likely closure of the program in a moment when, following the National Secretary of  In charge of methodology courses, they were engaged in teaching quantitative techniques in a context where there were no funds to do research. Their detached orientation from explicit ideological position-takings coexisted with politicized far-right philosophers who were in charge of theoretical and philosophical subjects. In this case, the idea of sociology as a branch of philosophy paved the way for the study of Thomist philosophy, Vatican encyclicals, and racist German authors. 2  Among the new teachers there were two retired military officers. Others had taught at military training schools. Fernando Cuevillas (1926–2015), a traditional sociólogo de cátedra, had worked as an advisor of the Information Service of the Military Air Force. 1

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Education’s suggestion, other sociology courses were being shut in other cities (Rodríguez 2015). Still, it was clear that, once separated from the FFyL and reorganized on a new basis, the program of sociology would not be among the most dynamic programs within the university. Although it was hosted at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences (FDyCS), a very influential institution and traditionally central breeding ground for the Argentinean elites,3 the new location did not entail any sort of recognition or ascension. Despite what its name could have led one to suppose, the FDyCS, one of the most conservative units, had no interest in sociology. Thus, there was no institutional integration, and its reluctant support was limited to the allowance of some classrooms where classes would take place. It is worth noting that these were not any classrooms but those placed in the basement of its traditional building, in a sector usually known as “the catacombs”. The message was clear: the importance of the training of sociologists was extremely far removed from the importance of the training of future lawyers. Although lack of adequate room for classes and research activities was not new to sociology at UBA, its new location, alienated and almost hidden from the main activities of FDyCS, resulted in a pronounced symbolic degradation (Raus 2007). And yet, some of the newcomers were under the delusion that, once the military were sure that the discipline had been devoid of its previous political and ideological “biases”, they could embrace it in the role of “expert” servant to the government. In their view, the preservation of the school might be thought as a first step in a path leading to influential “technical” tasks for the discipline. Thus, when a Ministry of Planning was launched, Carlos Weiss, a lawyer who had been appointed as the head of the program in 1977, said to a popular magazine that the new ministry would require “well trained academic sociologists” (Perel et al. 2006, p. 230). His successor, Efraín del Castillo, went even further as to imagine the future creation of a program of Political Science and other of Public Administration which would be housed in a new (and imaginary)  Since its opening in 1874, ten of its graduates had become presidents and countless others had been appointed as secretaries of different administrations (civilian and military). Its prominence was expressed by the monumental building in which it worked, which is reminiscent of the Parthenon. 3

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Faculty of Social Sciences, where sociology could also be admitted (Perel et  al. 2006). However, that was no more than wishful thinking: the Ministry of Planning had a fleeting existence, and in general the government officials did not rely on sociologists as important advisors or information suppliers; the unappreciated daily work in the shadowy basements of the FDyCS must have been a constant reminder of their marginality to those trying to foster an “official” sociology. Thus, in contrast to other authoritarian experiences, like the one in some eastern European communist countries (Bucholc 2016) or even the USSR (Titarenko and Zdravomyslova 2017) or the Nazi regime (Klingemann 1992),4 sociologists were not mobilized by the government as social researchers informing (and legitimizing) decision-making. Nor were they called on to provide ideological support as, in contrast to totalitarian regimes, the Argentinean dictatorship did not engage in the elaboration of a new doctrine or a coherent single-party ideology.5 Therefore, with no interested patrons asking for new knowledge and offering research funds, sociology at UBA remained an obscure undertaking6 and also one in which empirical studies was not favored. Not surprisingly, the Institute of Research remained closed until 1981, and when it was finally reopened, it was  As specialized literature has shown, totalitarian regimes were not always opposed by sociologists nor were an insurmountable obstacle for social research (Turner 1992). While explicit contradictions of the official party ideology were of course out of the question, sociological activities could survive (and in some cases even prosper) as sociologists were enrolled as experts (more than ideologues) at the service of the administration. In Germany, for example, as the “Nazi party’s own Weltanschauung could not replace expert knowledge”, the processing of decision-relevant information was taken over by experts, and sociologists were among these. Sociology was thus “modernized” as it became more involved with “useful” empirical research (Klingemann 1992, pp. 125–126). 5  As with the other military dictatorships that were parallelly installed in Chile, Brazil, or Uruguay, the Argentinean government looked for passive obedience and compliance more than enthusiastic adherence. General and pervasive terror was used to suppress any opposition to a program which was aimed at restoring the power of traditional elites (Kirtchik and Heredia 2015). 6  It is an additional indicator of the marginality of the program that those who had active networks with state officials and consequently were able to find better professional options did not remain as part of the teaching staff. Thus, after only one semester, Roberto Brie, a Thomist philosopher and former priest, decided to concentrate his energies in the CONICET, where he had managed to become an influential officer in the area of the social sciences as a result of a significant ideological “depuration” (Bekerman 2013). By then, he was also appointed as an official representative to UNESCO and endowed with some important funding, which he used to edit a journal called Sociológica and to launch a non-university research institute. Yet no important studies were conducted, and what is more, after the return of democracy in 1983, Brie was denounced as having participated in a corruption scheme (Rodríguez 2015). 4

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under the direction of Rodolfo Tecera del Franco, the old sociólogo de cátedra who, as seen in Chap. 1, had been the chair of sociology before the 1955 renewal.7 Under such conditions, there was a sharp disconnection between teaching contents and the analysis of social reality. This was in contrast with the “scientific sociology” emphasis on social research on the main problems confronting Argentinean society; it was also in opposition to the politicized phase in which political affairs were constantly examined and enthusiastically scrutinized by the teaching staff and students. Things were such that courses that were supposed to examine Argentinean society’s constitution and problems were assigned to two historians who, not inclined to delve themselves into controversial issues, did not touch on the events which started with Peronism in the mid-twentieth century. Apart from a very few exceptions, mandatory course literature did not include the scholarship that was produced in the previous years by former staff members. Critical works were of course left out, but also more detached works by “scientific sociology” were not considered. In a course delivered by Tecera del Franco, which according to its syllabus was intended to cope with the “Argentinean contemporary crises”, the only material dealing with local reality was Los que mandan (Those Who Rule) by de Ímaz. As it may be anticipated, the number of students was severely affected: if by 1972 there had been almost 2800, by 1980 there were no more than 500. The drop in enrolments was attuned with the military general restrictive policies aimed at reducing the access to higher education and weakening what they saw as more belligerent programs. But while in most other programs there were times in which there was no space for three quarters of the candidates (Unzué 2020), in Sociology the annual permitted quota was not always filled. Thus, with a decreasing student body, disaffiliated from a faculty and facing poor material conditions, and with a teaching staff comprising a lower caste of unskilled newcomers, the program lost all of the central standing it had traditionally enjoyed in the local sociological field. As a result, some private universities, like  It is worth noting that, in the meantime, del Franco had not devoted himself to updating his sociological training. Far from that, he had put a halt to his academic vocation and enthusiastically embraced a career as a professional politician. He was to serve as a congressman representing rightist fractions of Peronism. 7

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the University of El Salvador and the University of Belgrano, which offered part-time jobs, became relatively important as teaching institutions. Research activities, on their behalf, were mostly conducted in the private research institutes.

 rivate Research Institutes in a Hostile P Context. An “Enclave” Sociology? As was suggested earlier in this book, the private research institutes were a common and long-term presence in Argentinean intellectual field. They had emerged as a response to the perennial instability of public universities, with their constant and sharp politically motivated shifts (Thompson 1994). Thus, when new waves of (contradictory) purges came in 1973, 1974, and 1976, there already existed (or was at the verge of being born) a dense network of think tanks relatively insulated from the government. Most of them, like the Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES for their acronym in Spanish) and the Center for Population Studies (CENEP), were offspring of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute (ITDT).8 Because of that, its members, who were affiliated with “scientific sociology” and in general had done graduate studies at US elite institutions, were familiar with a professionalized academic culture. Publishing papers and writing reports, as well as entertaining connections with mainstream international institutions, were not unknown for them.9 Yet the extensive censorship, persecution, and terror established by the military once in power strongly affected the work within think tanks. While some members were threatened and had to go into exile, those who remained were obliged to cultivate discretion. Greater visibility could trigger the reaction of a government which did not hide its willingness to violently eliminate any source of dissent or criticism (Vessuri 1990;  From the beginning of the 1970s, the ITDT faced increasing economic difficulties, which led its authorities to downsize. 9  In these institutes, sociologists coexisted with economists, political scientists, and demographers whom they had known in the former ITDT. Although this did not necessarily mean that they would work on the same projects, the presence of representatives of different disciplines within the new institutes was a way of joining forces in a clearly difficult context. 8

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Wainerman 2015). Martial law and curfews were imposed. Because meetings, albeit purely scholarly, might result in suspicion, publicizing their activities was out of the question, not to mention open criticism of government policies. Their low profile was such that researchers started referring to the network of think tanks they participated in as a “catacomb university” (Sábato 1996).10 As a “subterranean” intellectual activity, it was (relatively) protected from repression, but at the same time, it was deprived of any chance of connecting to wider local publics and clienteles. For the same reason, local funding was not possible. Correspondingly, without indigenous patrons, support came from abroad.11 This was certainly not new, as Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funds were central in ITDT activities as was mentioned in Chap. 2. However, the establishment of a harsh dictatorship strengthened Argentinean social scientists’ position in the market of international scientific philanthropy. International, European, and Canadian cooperation organizations—such as the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation (SAREC) and the  When one of the institutes, the Social Science Research Center (CICSO, for its acronym in Spanish), organized a session to discuss the results of a study on the armed conflicts before 1976, the reaction was fear. As one member of CICSO remembered, the episode 10

would not go without a high price for us, since almost all the institutes in Buenos Aires branded us as ‘crazy’ and then withdrew from us like if we were the plague […] A great friend of mine [working in other institute] told me we had put the entire social science community at risk. I tried to make clear that the study was about the facts between 73–76, it was not about the military government, something which he had not even realized, such was his dread” (quoted in Santella 2000, p. 7).  The circumstances were particularly extreme and contrasted with the situation in Brazil, where repression by the military government, which was started in 1964, was much more selective and limited. In this case, quite similarly, private research institutes, also funded by foreign foundations, emerged as a response to interventions in universities and the dismissal of some professors. Yet, Brazilian institutes were far from keeping to subterranean activity. While they were able to develop a research agenda strongly connected with local opposing actors, who wanted to attract attention on the expansion of poverty and social backwardness, some of its members, as was the case with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, played a very active role in the public space and political field. In fact, sociologists were influential actors in the organization of the main opposing parties fostering a return to democracy. While one of the main institutes, the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP, for its acronym in Portuguese) had close ties with the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB, for its acronym in Portuguese), the Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies (CEDEC), another influential center, managed to play a key role in the founding of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores). As a result, sociology achieved a significant prominence in the eyes of the general public (Cordeiro and Neri 2019). It is worth noting that Fernando Henrique Cardoso would be elected president of Brazil in 1994. 11

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International Development Research Center (IDRC)—joined the US foundations (Brunner and Barrios 1987). Supporting the social sciences was seen as a contribution to the resistance to an authoritarian regime which was clearly violating most basic human rights. It was also a way to preserve an elite of social scientists who might engage in relevant public roles once the political situation improved (Berger and Blugerman 2017). Funding was correspondingly generous and, albeit not without constraints, allowed for many studies to be conducted. Between 1975 and 1983, the Ford Foundation alone allocated almost 1.7 million US dollars in Argentina (Berger and Blugerman 2017), inflation-adjusted to 2020. Additionally, patronage by international agencies worked as a protection (or at least that was how local scholars saw it) against the witch hunts that hounded the intellectual field (Heredia 2011; O’Donnell 2007; Morales Martín and Algañaraz Soria 2016). Further internationalization was then appraised as a comprehensive survival strategy that not only secured funding (in a context where it was obvious there were not going to be monies from local sources), but also provided with personal security (Algañaraz Soria 2013). And yet, such a strategy did not come without consequences. Topics of research as well as the way to study them were increasingly inseparable from the donors’ orientations. Of course there were those who could sell an intellectual agenda they were already engaged with to the foundations. This was the case with political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell who, from the CEDES, which he helped to create in 1975, was able to pursue his scholarship on what he called the bureaucratic authoritarian state (O’Donnell 2007). This was an agenda he had started while he was doing his PhD at Yale University at the beginning of the 1970s. Others were more permeable to their donor’s preferences and had to do research on matters that were new to them and that they would certainly not have chosen had they been able to have other sources of support. In these cases, intellectual curiosity (or previous political engagement with certain topics) had to be sacrificed in the name of survival. This was the case, at least initially, with the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO). This center was opened in Buenos Aires in 1974 as a reaction to the difficulties the Chilean headquarters were undergoing after the 1973 coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.

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Expected to do research and teaching in such areas as political and urban sociology as well as political philosophy, there was a promise that FLACSO would be funded by UBA and the Argentinean government. Thus, the predicament was not minor when the turn to the right of national politics resulted in the cancellation of these agreements and, what is more, produced potential hostilities with a military government that was seriously considering the inclusion of FLACSO in its list of terrorist organizations. When everything pointed to the shutting of this center, it was saved by a research grant by the Dutch government that allowed for the maintenance of operations. The price, though, was high, as a significant reorientation in interests was required. The study which got funding was on breast feeding practices (Algañaraz Soria 2013). This example is surely extreme, and as literature on funding has shown, recipients always have some degree of maneuver to play with (Turner 1999). Still, studies on population, woman’s, and sexual and reproductive health, which were major topics in the work of institutes like CEDES and CENEP, were inseparable from the agenda that foreign organizations, especially the Ford Foundation, were advancing at that moment (Berger and Blugerman 2017). Without this funding and the dependence of local scholars on it, the development of these areas would certainly have been slower. Increasing productivity was another outcome of the ascendancy of foundations, because conducting studies (and doing reports) at an accelerated pace became a critical condition for accessing new funds and, hence, securing the continuation of the think tanks. As Brunner and Barrios (Brunner and Barrios 1987, p. 157) pointed out, the “U.S. maxim of ‘publish or perish’” was locally translated as “he who does not write does not get paid”. It is true that members of the institutes were not unprepared for such challenge as they were familiar with demanding productivity standards.12 Yet, the new working conditions increased the pressure (Morales Martín and Algañaraz Soria 2016), particularly because funding was in general channeled on a project-by-project base and no  Publishing imperatives had not been uncommon within ITDT. In fact, when the center started to suffer from financial problems and downsizing was decided, publishing records were one of the main items to be considered. 12

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institutional support or overhead (that could be used to pay fixed costs as salaries, administration, premises rent, etc.) was offered (Berger and Blugerman 2017).13 As a result, the institutes were in a frenetic race in which the linking of one project to the other, as much as relying on “creative accounting”, was the norm.14 Catalina Wainerman (1933-), one of the founders of the CENEP, remembered: I never imagined that [opening the center would imply the adoption of ] a new way of life, not just a new way of making a living. There were […] no luxuries, but a lot, a lot of work and sacrifice, project designs, applications for funding, permanent evaluations, strict calendar, and distressing waits without knowing if we would be able to economically survive. But worse, we were not even able to make a stop to celebrate the obtaining of one funding that we had to start designing the next project to keep the assembly line working, that is, the center running. And all this in a country that did not appreciate or consume our production, which was sustained from abroad and abroad oriented. Many times I felt like a “sorcerer’s apprentice” who could not stop doing projects and projects so that CENEP would not succumb, even when my own personal needs might be satisfied [I was like a] “sorcerer’s apprentice” who designed a project, got funding, and delivered the report that would allow me to write a new line on my curriculum thus increasing my chances of succeeding in the next call for funding. All without any transfer to society as reports went to the file cabinets of the funding agencies, and perhaps to an article I could write or a presentation I could deliver [on some international conference]. (Wainerman 2015, pp. 116–117)

All in all, foreign funding was vital for the survival of research activities. It was also important in the making of a local sociological (and social scientific) elite with close connections to international philanthropy and research agendas. Internationalization was indeed a driving force. Traveling to conferences, inviting foreign colleagues, as well as spending some time as a visiting scholar at some university in the “north”, were  There were some exceptions. In 1983 Ford endowed CEDES with a generous subsidy that allowed it to buy a house where to move its headquarters. 14  Criticism of this kind of funding was not unusual, and institutes in different countries asked for more flexible and longer-term funding (Brunner and Barrios 1987). 13

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encouraged, as was publishing in English. The CEDES, it is worth noting, started releasing its annual bulletin, in which its activities were summarized in English, the language of international philanthropy. Also, as foundations work on a regional bases in which the Southern Cone was taken as a unity, cooperation with Brazilian, Chilean, and Uruguayan scholars was encouraged as was a “regional perspective” (Calandra 2019). As the national context was unwelcoming, the regional and international contexts grew stronger.15 In the last few years, dependency theory, originally devised to understand socioeconomic development in Latin America (Cardoso and Faletto [1971] 1979), had been insightfully mobilized to understand academic and intellectual dependence in Latin America (Beigel 2013, 2019). Following this line of thought, it can be stated that given the censorship and persecution that impeded the addressing of local publics and clienteles, as well as the free dissemination of results, private research institutes worked like colonial “enclaves”, that is to say, as “modernized” spaces in close connection to the international mainstream, with proper means of production, but without a significant impact on the society they studied and the rest of its sociological institutions. “Trickle-down effects” were therefore limited as no connection with the UBA program was possible16  A convergent trend toward regionalization was experienced under quite different conditions by those who went into exile. While some chose France and Venezuela, there was a significant group that arrived in Mexico. By then, Mexico was living an economic boom caused by the high price of oil, which allowed for a very significant expansion of funding in the universities and other research institutes (Reyna 2005). Many sociologists (and social scientists) from Argentina, as well as Brazil and Chile, were warmly welcomed by a country traditionally inclined to receiving politically exiles. Appointed as full-time teachers and researchers at important institutions like the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, for its acronym in Spanish), FLACSO, and the College of Mexico, they met with much better working conditions and salary levels than the ones they had known in Argentina. Among these sociologists, there were some affiliated with Marxist sociology, who, taking advantage of their working conditions, engaged in intense debates on the reasons for the defeat of social movements in Argentina and Latin America and the installation of widespread authoritarianism. The influence of Eurocommunism was important in shifting them toward a significant reappraisal of the political as a chief social analysis variable, and of democratic institutions, which they had  traditionally neglected as merely “formal” or “bourgeois”  (see next chapter). 16  It may go without saying that there were no relationships between those working at the private research institutes and those at the UBA program. While appointed as an official for UNESCO, Brie was in charge of the Argentinean chapter of an international study on the situation of social research in different countries. In his account he did not mention the work being conducted at the private institutes (Rodríguez, 2017). This situation reinforced the alienation of the UBA program 15

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and the resources to train young assistants were limited. CEDES, for example, launched a two-year fellowship program to train young researchers, but by 1983 only four graduates had completed the program (Morales Martín and Algañaraz Soria 2016). Research and teaching remained consequently divorced.17

 ociology as a Consultant Profession. S A Consolation Prize? The imposition of censorship and authoritarian rule put a sudden end to the hot-and-widespread debates on what sociology was and ought to be. Many of the scientific and political-cultural journals in which these debates had occurred were closed as discretion became a matter of life and death for many. Still, concerns about sociology as a consultant profession and worries about the future of graduates did not wane. They could not. By 1978, in the city of Buenos Aires alone there were more than 2200 individuals who had completed their studies in sociology (Bialakowsky 1982). And the job market, which had always been pretty tight, was not expanding. As was mentioned, programs in public universities were being dismantled and sociologists dismissed. The military’s views on sociology as “subversive” did not help to improve the graduate’s traditionally uncertain employment outlook. Full-time jobs, whether in the professoriate or outside it, were insufficient, and according to data from a survey conducted in those years, a large proportion of the sociologists had to supplement their “sociologically related” professional and its endogamy (as mutual reference was common in the syllabi). This auto-reference, along with the low level and standards, would make it easier to dismiss the staff when democracy was reinstalled (see next chapter). 17  This situation was also in sharp contrast with events in Brazil where even under authoritarian rule research and teaching could thrive hand in hand. To be sure, the military did not avoid repression and purges in universities, but they also promoted a modernizing reform that resulted in an unprecedented expansion of full-time appointments, research funds, and graduate programs. Although the idea of the government was to encourage natural and technological sciences, social sciences were able to take advantage of the situation (Motta 2014). Of course, explicit critical and radical discourse needed to be avoided. Yet, it was a time in which many sociologists were able to start a career in the professoriate in a context of extraordinary abundance of resources. Brazilian social sciences were far from the de-institutionalizing processes affecting their neighbors (Garreton et al. 2005).

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activities with tasks which did not have much to do with what they had studied (Bialakowsky 1982). And yet, it was in that difficult situation—or maybe because of it— that the first professional association aimed at the “corporate” defense of sociology as a consultant profession emerged. Doubtless, the eclipse of most of the radical discourse denouncing applied sociology and fostering politicization was a major factor. In 1975 an Association of Graduates of Sociology (CGS for its acronym in Spanish) was created in Buenos Aires by a group of individuals who wanted to improve sociologist’s working opportunities and, more generally, the standing of their discipline within the system of professions.18 Those who promoted the organization were not high-profile sociologists and in general did not have a record within academia or radical activist circles. This, along with their focus on strictly professional matters (and their correlative unwillingness to address political issues), favored the survival of the CGS in the hostile context of surveillance. While the private research institutes were a shelter for all those who, not without difficulties, were trying to make an academic career, the CGS offered itself as a meeting place for all of those who, without the possibility or without the intention to work as academics, were trying to find a niche in the nonacademic job market. The latter were a vast majority: according to the afore-mentioned study, no more than 15% claimed to have an academic post as their main professional activity. The rest were mostly hired in non-ranked posts in the public sector or in some private companies (Bialakowsky 1982). The CGS offered a wide range of short post-graduate courses and seminars on “technical” issues, such as methodology and research tools. These were particularly popular among those seeking to be trained in a marketable expertise that could improve their chances of getting a job, whether in a state office or in the corporate world. Indeed, for those who had studied in the period of extreme politicization, when specific methodological matters were neglected and no significant empirical research experiences were accessible, doing these courses appeared as an  Other similar organizations were parallelly launched in different cities in the interior like La Plata, San Juan, and Santiago del Estero, where difficulties for sociologists were not smaller (Carrera 2019). 18

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opportunity to compensate for what they now saw as deficits in their sociological training. For others, it was simply a way to keep connected to a discipline which they were not able to practice. Thus, far from previous views that sternly questioned the idea of selling the discipline to broad clienteles, the CGS openly defended the constitution of sociology as a “consulting profession”, according to the model offered by classic professions such as law, engineering, or medicine. What is more, “ideologization” was rendered as a misleading option paving the way “to the estrangement (alienation) of the specific role” of the sociologist and to his unavoidable “frustration” (Bialakowsky 1982, p.  4). According to this view, not only could consulting work secure “our livelihood”, but it could reinforce “self-esteem” and offer a way to “serve the community to the best of our ability” (Bialakowsky 1982, p. 1). As may be seen, the new context resulted in a recovery of the ideas of those who, like Germani who was referenced in the report, had defended the inclusion of sociologists in the state and private companies. However, such a recovery was peculiar. In the past, reflections on the ways sociologists could earn their living were always part of a broader question about the social role of the discipline. And, as was seen in Chaps. 2 and 3, responses were not modest. Those who promoted applied sociology believed it could become an intellectual force capable of increasing social rationality. In some cases, such as Di Tella’s, the claim was that applied sociology could even nurture “scientific revolutions” comparable to Psychoanalysis, Keynesianism, or Marxism. Similarly, those who abhorred applied sociology contended that the discipline could orient radical change and revolution, if wisely combined with Marxist and/or nationalistic thinking. Albeit seemingly opposed, both views equally adhered to an idea in which sociologists held a “mission” that went far beyond a limited concern for employability problems and professional success. Now, in the context of a harsh dictatorship, optimistic beliefs in the cumulative progress of societies were being cruelly refuted, as hopes in the redemptive potential of the working classes and mobilized nations had been. As grand narratives sustaining grand visions of the discipline fell in the face of crises, ambitions were lowered. Far from asking whether sociologists guide society on its way to “modernization” or “revolution”, the new worries involved the ways in which the discipline should

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conform to satisfy the needs of the actually existing society. A sign of this shift came in 1980, when the CGS conducted a survey on the “occupational spectrum” for sociologists. The initiative, as the report stated, sought to shed light on the graduates’ working realities and was inspired by the hope that a more detailed knowledge of these realities could point to the things sociologists should be trained in. Such an undertaking could eventually help in defining the “contents that sociology schools should be concern of ” as well as “a clearer and more explicit visualization of the most probable possibilities of professional practice” (Bialakowsky 1982, p. 12). As is the case with vocational disciplines, always worried to keep track of the needs of employers, sociologists in the CGS were thinking on the ways to match the demands of the labor market. Pragmatism prevailed over grandeur. The turn was pervasive. In 1980, Di Tella was insistent about the need to go beyond the academic institutions in search of new jobs in a wide range of institutions. Yet, compared to his 1967 intervention referenced in Chap. 3, he did so within the framework of a much more modest narrative whose main concern was in the situation of young graduates confronting a tight job market, and not in “scientific revolutions”. In fact, his main target was radicalization and extreme politicization which, in his eyes, had blocked the development of applied sociology. For him, it was urgent to avoid “mad ideas” that had turned “most sociological courses into indoctrination forums” and get over any “ideological fever” that could affect “students’ brains”, while eliminating “their interests in the specifically professional uses of their discipline” (Di Tella 1980, p.  312–313). On this occasion, his preaching did no longer refer to Psychoanalysis, Keynesianism, or Marxism as possible or likely models. Far from it, applied sociology and its techniques were defended first and foremost as a means of “making a living”. There is a well-entrenched tendency in those who approach sociology to devalue these techniques, either because they are less stimulating to the imagination than general interpretations of society or politics, or because they are considered to serve only to put patches on society, or to merely enrich the clients that hire these services. Although this may be true, it is no less true that making a living is a necessity, and that these specialties are

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among the most promising in this regard. Thus, as soon as the sociologist gives up his obsession with utopia, he may get wise enough to accept the limitations of the human condition—which includes his own—, and accept to be a wheel in the cogwheel of society, in a significant part of his activity. Sociologists, like any other professionals, must be able to advise and “cure” their patient or client, without wondering whether that client goes to mass every day, or if political convictions place the client at the forefront of social change. (Di Tella 1980, p. 312)

Extremely violent oppression was not without consequences for Argentinean society. While repression and mass murders left a deep and lasting mark on the social fabric and an enduring mistrust of state security agencies, the socioeconomic policies fostered by the militaries and its civilian allies also resulted in general (and significant) decline in living conditions. Severe de-industrialization was added to burdensome foreign public debt and an uncontrollable inflation rate, which by 1983 reached 350%. Thus, when the irrational (and bound-to-lead-to-defeat) Malvinas campaign (Falklands War) led to the implosion of the military regime, the situation could hardly have been worse. The challenges for democratic institutions and the new government would therefore be major. And the situation would not be much different for sociology. De-institutionalization and persecution, lessening of its resource base and a weak job market, significant social ostracism, and strengthened dependence on foreign funding were only some of the effects and legacies of years of authoritarian rule. Not much remained of a once-fashionable discipline which, albeit not without difficulties, had managed to become popular within the media, the university, and the intellectual field. To be sure, reconstruction activities would be embraced with enthusiasm, but the starting point was extraordinarily tough.

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References Algañaraz Soria, Víctor. 2013. Between Scientific Autonomy and Academic Dependency: Private Research Institutes under Dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983). The Case of FLACSO. In The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America, ed. Fernanda Beigel, 249–262. Farnham: Ashgate. Beigel, Fernanda. 2013. Introduction: The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. In The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. Farnham: Ashgate. ———. 2019. Latin American Sociology: A Centennial Regional Tradition. In Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, ed. Fernanda Beigel. Bekerman, Fabiana. 2013. The Scientific Field During Argentina’s Latest Military Dictatorship (1976–1983): Contraction of Public Universities and Expansion of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET). Minerva 51 (2): 253–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11024-­013-­9227-­9. Berger, Gabriel, and Leopoldo Blugerman. 2017. La Fundación Ford en la Argentina. Cinco décadas de inversión social privada al servicio del desarrollo y de la protección y ampliación de los derechos humanos. Victoria: UDESA. Bialakowsky, Alberto. 1982. Espectro ocupacional del licenciado en sociología en el medio profesional argentino. Buenos Aires: Colegio de Graduados en Sociología. Brunner, José, and Alicia Barrios. 1987. Inquisición, mercado y filantropía. Santiago de Chile: Flacso. Buchbinder, Pablo. 2004. Historia de las universidades argentinas. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. ———. 2016. La Universidad de Buenos Aires bajo la Dictadura. Una aproximación a través del estudio del perfil, discurso y pronunciamientos públicos de dos de sus rectores. CIAN.  Revista de Historia de Las Universidades 19 (2): 153–173. Bucholc, Marta. 2016. Sociology in Poland. To Be Continued? Basingstoke: Palgrave Pilot. Calandra, Benedetta. 2019. Cultural Philanthropy and Political Exile: The Ford Foundation between Argentina and The United States (1959–1979). Tempo 25 (2): 453–469. Cano, Daniel. 1985. La educación superior en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Flacso. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Enzo Faletto. 1979. Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Carrera, Cecilia. 2019. Las asociaciones profesionales de sociología en Argentina y las disputas por la ‘profesión'. Revista Temas Sociológicos 25: 87–124. Cordeiro, Veridiana Domingos, and Hugo Neri. 2019. Sociology in Brazil: A Brief Institutional and Intellectual History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pilot. CPS. 2006. Homenaje a sociólogos asesinados o desaparecidos por el terrorismo de estado. Revista Argentina de Sociología 4 (6): 9–10. Di Tella, Torcuato. 1980. La sociología argentina en una perspectiva de veinte años. Desarrollo Económico 20 (79): 299–327. Garretón, Manuel Antonio, Miguel Murmis, Gerónimo de Sierra, and Hélgio Trindade. 2005. Social Sciences in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Social Science Information 44 (2–3): 557–593. https://doi. org/10.1177/0539018405053297. Heredia, Mariana. 2011. Los centros privados de expertise en economía: Génesis, dinámica y continuidad de un nuevo actor político en la Argentina. In Saber lo que se hace. Expertos y política en Argentina, ed. Sergio Morresi and Gabriel Vommaro, 297-338. Buenos Aires: Prometeo-UNGS. Invernizzi, Hernán, and Judith Gociol. 2010. Un golpe a los libros. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Kirtchik, Olessia, and Mariana Heredia. 2015. Social and Behavioral Sciences under Dictatorship. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2nd ed., 139–146. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Klingemann, Carsten. 1992. Social-Scientific Experts—No Ideologues. Sociology and Social Research in the Third Reich. In Sociology Responds to Fascism, ed. Stephen Turner and Dirk Käsler, 125–150. London: Routledge. Morales Martín, Juan Jesús, and Víctor Algañaraz Soria. 2016. Ciencias sociales, políticas de autonomía académica y estrategias de internacionalización en la última dictadura militar argentina (1974–1983). Un análisis de los casos de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales y El Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales 61 (227): 223–246. Motta, Rodrigo. 2014. As universidades e o regime militar. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. O’Donnell, Guillermo. 2007. Guillermo O’Donnell: Democratization, Political Engagement, and Agenda-Setting Research. In Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics, ed. Gerardo Munck and Richard Snyder, 273–304. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Perel, Pablo, Eduardo Raíces, and Martín Perel. 2006. Universidad y Dictadura. Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación.

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Raus, Diego. 2007. La Sociología en el ‘Proceso.’. Sociología en Debate 1 (1): 24–38. Reyna, José Luis. 2005. An Overview of the Institutionalization Process of Social Sciences in Mexico. Social Science Information 44 (2–3): 411–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018405053294. Rodríguez, Laura. 2015. Universidad, Peronismo y Dictadura, 1973–1983. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Sábato, Hilda. 1996. Sobrevivir en dictadura: Las ciencias sociales y la “universidad de las Catacumbas”. In A veinte años del golpe. Con memoria democrática, ed. Hugo Quiroga and César Tcach. Rosario: Homo Sapiens. Santella, Agustín. 2000. Desarrollos en Ciencias Sociales: El ‘CICSO’. Razón y Revolución 6: 1–23. Thompson, Andrés. 1994. “Think Tanks” en la Argentina. Conocimiento, instituciones y política. Buenos Aires: Documentos del CEDES. Titarenko, Larissa, and Elena Zdravomyslova. 2017. Sociology in Russia. A Brief History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pilot. Turner, Stephen. 1992. Sociology and Fascism in the Interwar Period. The Myth and Its Frame. In Sociology Responds to Fascism, 1–13. London: Routledge. ———. 1999. Does Funding Produce Its Effects? The Rockefeller Case. In Development of the Social Sciences in the United States and Canada: The Role of Philanthropy, ed. Theresa Richardon and Donald Fisher. 213–226. Stanford: Ablex. Unzué, Martín. 2020. Profesores, científicos e intelectuales: La Universidad de Buenos Aires de 1955 a su bicentenario. Buenos Aires: IIGG-CLACSO. Vessuri, Hebe. 1990. El Sísifo sureño: las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Quipu 7 (2): 149–185. Wainerman, Catalina. 2015. La trastienda de la investigación social. Acerca de la ‘ñata contra el vidrio. Ciencia e Investigación 3 (1): 110–123.

5 The Restoration of Democracy and the Recovery of Sociology (1983–1989)

Abstract  The restoration of democracy brought about important changes within the local sociological field. The mood was re-foundational as the end of ideological persecution allowed for free debate. Yet, while important attempts to re-institutionalize the discipline were made, economic resources remained scarce and difficulties were significant. Also, other intellectual ventures, like Political Science, became more fashionable and competed with sociology. Still, enrollments skyrocketed at (a totally renewed) UBA program, where student activism (once more) resulted in the neglect of applied sociology and the disdain for more “detached” versions of the discipline. Indeed, the most visible figures were some (formerly) Marxist sociologists who, after coming back from exile, engaged as influential presidential advisors and public intellectuals identified with the defense of democracy. Rather than performing empirical research, these sociologists devoted themselves to the production of a set of creative idées-forces with which they sought to edify politicians and the people, and nurture a novel “democratic culture”. Keywords  Democratic spring • Public intellectuals • Rejection of applied sociology • Juan Carlos Portantiero • Emilio de Ípola © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_5

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From Hope to Disillusionment “With democracy one eats, one is educated, one is cured”. This was the motto of the new democratically elected president, Raúl Alfonsín, who came to power at the end of 1983 after surprisingly beating the Peronists. A progressive politician who came from a centrist, “middle-class” party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR for its acronym in Spanish), Alfonsín sought to associate the recovery of civic and political basic rights with a significant (and accelerated) improvement in social welfare. It was inconceivable, he stressed, that in a country which was famous for its beef and food exports, many suffered from hunger (Adair 2020). People’s response to the return of democracy was impressive. More than four million individual citizens became affiliated to political parties, whose campaign rallies gathered hundreds of thousands in the streets. Argentina was having a “democratic spring”. However, difficulties were major. Initially, and not without a great deal of wishful thinking, the new government tried to reignite the economy with a push on demand while at the same time imposing price controls to reduce inflation. The program proved disastrous and, in only one year, inflation doubled. As prices became uncontrollable, Alfonsín was forced to launch a “war economy” and sacrifice his promises of widespread welfare (Heredia and Daniel 2019). Things were no easier on the military front. While in 1985 Argentina called the attention of the world by becoming the first country to prosecute military dictators in civilian trials for their violations of human rights, increasing discontent among the lower ranks, who were afraid of being judged, triggered a series of uprisings. Without loyal forces to suppress the rebels, the government was compelled to pass impunity laws that prevented new trials. Not surprisingly, the legitimacy of Alfonsín was eroded as much as people’s hopes for democracy. Voluntarism and optimism were also evident in state policies on academic institutions. Referring to the period comprised between 1955 and 1966 as a “golden era” in order to inspire reforms, the government returned autonomy to public universities along with student and graduate participation in their government. More importantly, open

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admissions were reestablished. At the same time, scientific research was recognized as a fundamental task. Manuel Sadovsky (1914–2005), the local introducer of computer science and a leading figure in the science field in the 1960s, was appointed as the Secretary of Science and Technology. Moreover, ideological pluralism was encouraged. Many of those who had been ousted during the previous years (many of whom had to go into exile) were (re)admitted to the universities and the CONICET. Enthusiasm was general. Yet, difficulties soon appeared. As the quotas and fees established by the military were eliminated at public universities, the large pent-up demand was released: in only three years the number of students rose by almost 70%—from 416,000 to 700,000 (Buchbinder and Marquina 2008, p. 27). Although the government was not unaware of the effects that open admission policy would have, here again, naïve hopes for (easy) economic growth prevailed. Thus, when budgets were tighter than expected, research had to be sacrificed, teaching loads increased, and infrastructure needs prioritized. Part-time appointments (not infrequently ad honorem) were privileged while funding for studies was frozen. What is more, after an initial recovery, salaries lost the battle against inflation. The decline was such that in 1985 salaries were only a half of what they were in 1974. As it was clear that a “golden era” was not being reestablished, teacher’s strikes were rife (Buchbinder 2005, p. 218). By the end of Alfonsín’s term, a full-time professor at UBA made as little as 250 US dollars a month (Biglaiser 2009, p. 78)—less than 530 US dollars inflation-adjusted to 2020. Quite predictably, the restoration of democracy brought about important changes within the local sociological field. The mood, once more, was re-foundational; sociologists and students were not exempt from the broader social hope and excitement. Because of the end of censorship and persecution, sociologists were able to openly debate their ideas and circulate their works. For those who had remained in the country in the private research institutes, the new stage presented them with the chance of reemerging from the “catacombs” and the prospect of addressing new publics, overcoming their former isolation. For those who came back from exile, there was an opportunity to reassume their posts at universities and, as many of them had pursued successful careers abroad, to apply their experiences to new endeavors. For many of the younger sociologists

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who had had a hard time trying to make a living as “sociologists” in the context of a depressed job market, the moment seemed promising to finally start their career, be it at the academia or at a state agency. Enthusiasm was such that more than 600 graduates, eager to become teachers, submitted their resumes to the UBA program. And yet, as with the country in general, things were difficult. On the one hand, funding for full-time academic jobs remained scarce; on the other, the public visibility as the discipline had enjoyed in the years before the last military regime was not recovered. As elsewhere, other intellectual ventures, like Political Science and Political Theory and Philosophy, became more fashionable within the intellectual field and the public space. Those sociologists who still managed to become influential voices turned in the direction of those endeavors, which seemed more attuned to the current problem of the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, to the detriment of (now) seemingly obsolete views of society. Sociology as a brand had lost much of its appeal.

 Difficult (yet Enduring) Reorganization A of the UBA Program As in the past, the shift in political authorities was followed by a change in the teaching staff at the UBA program and a significant reorientation in its profile and contents. The head of the program was Susana Torrado (1939–), Germani’s former assistant, who had done graduate studies in France and worked as a visiting scholar in Chile and Canada. Identified with “scientific sociology” and specialized in social demography, she was convinced that, giving the poor quality that had prevailed during the military regime, a total renewal of the professoriate was in order. Thus, after massive firings, she called those who she saw as the “notables” of Argentinean sociology to join her. The group was mixed and comprised members of the “scientific” and “Marxists” factions who by that moment were experienced scholars. While during the previous years some of them had remained in the country working at private research institutes, others, those with an activist record, had to go into exile. For Torrado, the

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recruitment of such leading figures was crucial to restore the program and bestow it with some of the centrality it used to have in the sociological scene before the last military regime. Nevertheless, it was soon clear that the main professional energies of this group of sociologists were to be placed elsewhere, as the program did not seem to offer a secure and attractive base from which to build an academic career or reach out bigger audiences. Cumulative degradation, first with extreme pollicization and then with brutal repression, had not been without consequences: the program was not housed within any faculty; it did not have a building of its own where to conduct classes, much less offices for its staff members; it has lost its library (which was not moved when separated from FFyL); and, what was worse, the material resources that might help to restore it and fund research were not in sight. In fact, the main efforts of the UBA’s rector within the social sciences were concentrated on the launching of two new undergraduate programs, one in Political Science and another in Communication Studies. These new programs were planned as schools in which to train experts who, besides doing academic research, might serve as political parties’ advisors, qualified bureaucrats, journalists, media experts, and even schoolteachers. All of them were endowed with the mission of edifying the younger generations and promoting the democratic creed. Thus, those sociologists who had other job opportunities in more promising institutions, like the CONICET, preferred to limit their contribution within the UBA sociology program to a weekly class.1 Torrado herself quickly resigned her post and replaced it with a part-time teaching load. Her successor was an unknown young sociologist who in the past had been a close administrative collaborator of the UBA rector. His modest resume was much more attuned to the humble nature of the position he was to take. And still, the program was successful in recruiting new undergraduates. Their number quadrupled in only four years, reaching almost 2000 by 1988. This, along with the national authorities’ decision to reestablish students’ participation in university governance, resulted in the renewal of their influence on the orientation of the program. A juvenile, radical,  In that context, even the few who were offered the scarce full-time appointments declined the proposal as activities outside UBA seemed more promising. 1

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and politicized atmosphere was back. Initially, students mobilized against anyone who might be thought as having “collaborated” with the military regime. The hunt was not without excesses, and some scholars who had not taught during the military regime but had worked as low-profile state agents were the target of intense campaigns. Protests included speeches in classrooms to provide information on the “collaborationists” and the display of big banners on the corridors denouncing their alleged links with the military. As in the past, students’ sway was comprehensive and capillary: they were able to impose their views not only on “high politics”, as they managed to impose a new head of the school in 1986 against the UBA’s authorities will,2 but also on (apparently small) details, such as preventing the inclusion of non-translated English materials as mandatory course literature. They did this in the name of educational inclusion (as there were students who could not read a second language) and national pride. It was in this radicalized context that in 1985 the first proposed curriculum was rejected. This curriculum was designed by a special commission formed by six professors, two representatives of the Association of Graduates of Sociology (CGS for its acronym in Spanish), and two students. Overly critical of the “cultural isolation imposed by authoritarianism”, the commission proposed to update contents, promote theoretical pluralism, and foster a deeper connection between theory, methodology, and research. Moreover, in a vein reminiscent of the curriculum promoted by “scientific sociology” in the 1950s, it encouraged research training on the “main social problems” along with applied sociology, that is to say, “the conduct of pre-professional practices beyond the university and the academic world” (Comisión Curricular Permanente 1985). According to the commission, this was essential to avoid the dangers of the “ivory tower” and to facilitate the transition to the job market. To carry this out, it urged the school to establish formal agreements with state agencies and other institutions in which senior students might have their first working experience. The emphasis was such that doing an internship was established as a graduation requirement. Against the significant isolation (or virtual autism) that prevailed in the program during  They chose the candidate and had a “job interview” with him.

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the military regime, the commission wanted to foster a more organic relationship with “outside” publics and clienteles. The influence of the members of the CGS was clear on this matter: future sociologists were not thought as pure academics. However, as in the 1950s, the conception of the new curriculum underestimated the extent to which UBA’s open admission policy impeded such an emphasis on research and applied sociology, which was particularly aggravated in the context of the material restrictions within which the program was being relaunched. Part-time appointments, as much as lack of funding to do research, were major hindrances, which in this case were not counterbalanced by monies coming from foreign foundations (see Chap. 2). But undoubtedly the main obstacle was the role of students’ ideas about what sociology ought to be. As it was possible to see on their leaflets and magazines, they were eager to engage with activism and to promote profound changes in society from a radical point of view. More than garnering some skills and knowledge to be used once graduated in an extended labor market, they were interested in connecting the program with the advancement of the poor and the workers. In the context of the extended broader social optimism about political action of the time, students were a significant vector in “re-politicizing” sociology. The 1960s radical spirit was a point of reference for many of them. After the first curriculum’s failure, a new proposal was finally implemented in 1988, in which there was less emphasis on research and on applied sociology. No internship was mentioned, and research activities were, pragmatically, reserved only for senior students. This conferred the program with an ineluctable “bookish” nature, in which the teaching of theory and methodology was disconnected from concrete research activities. Once again, learning by doing proved hard to blend with crowded classes and a mass university.3 Moreover, the program’s connection with  Warnings against the dissociation of theory and methodology were not absent. Catalina Wainerman, a member of the CENEP who lectured for a semester (see below), was quite clear: “unlike the students of Chemistry, Physics, or Biology, who are accustomed to reading theoretical materials that include the reflection on the practical methods that intervened on their production, students of sociology are exposed to dissociated materials. Indeed, the case of sociology is one of the few in which the curriculum includes methodology courses as isolated elements. This dissociation is an aberration that can either take to the training of theorists who, fearful of “quantrophrenia”, confuse sociology with poetry and metaphysics […] or to the training of pure empiricists who 3

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professional fields for the graduate was quite elusive. And yet, while students were able to veto the vocational approach of the original curriculum, they were not strong enough to impose their view of sociology as activism: outreach activities “in favor of the oppressed” were not included as regular activities in the program. The emerging organization was then a mixture of influences which did not entirely satisfy any of the actors who were involved in their preparation. This was especially the case with those filiated within the CGS who, as was seen in Chap. 4, were active promoters of sociology as a consulting profession and who now were witnessing how little their views on the discipline as much as their professional experience were appreciated within UBA. However, they were not quitters and engaged in actions beyond the university to influence the field. After hard lobbying with some congressmen, they were able to get a law passed regulating the “profession of sociology” in 1986. The law, which was modeled upon traditional consultant professions, such as Medicine or Engineering, settled an official jurisdiction for sociologists. But it did not have any real impact. The new institution that was born out of that law and which replaced the CGS, the Sociological Professional Council (CPS for its acronym in Spanish), did not exert significant influence upon the labor market for sociologists, much less on counterbalancing the students’ ascendancy over the UBA program. By the end of the 1980s, activities were rare within the CPS and funding problems were frequent, as registered professionals were few and did not always pay their fees (Carrera 2019). It is worth noting that the reorganization of the UBA program of sociology that took place at the return to democracy inaugurated a phase of unprecedented stability: the orientations that were then established remained without substantial changes until the present. In fact, the curriculum which was implemented in 1988 is still today in force. Evidently this was in sharp contrast with its previous trajectory, in which there had prevailed a disorderly sequence of truly diverse cycles. Contributing to that stabilization was the fact that in 1990 the program was affiliated with a new faculty, the Social Science Faculty (FCS for its acronym in Spanish), produce knowledge which is statistically significant but deprived of any substantial relevance” (Wainerman 1984).

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which was created to house two other “orphan” programs, Social Work and Labor Relations, and the afore-mentioned newcomers, Political Science and Communication Studies. As all these programs were already at work when they were put together, they did not merge their staff or create a new departmental organization. They remained a confederation of schools with limited relations. As deficits in infrastructure were frequent, as a result of the growth in student numbers, they even came to operate within different buildings (see next chapter).

An Excluding Pluralism One idea in which those who became members of the renewed staff of the UBA sociology program agreed upon was avoiding exclusion based on ideological grounds.4 In effect, after a history marked by frequent purges, diversity was embraced as a positive value. This allowed for a novel coexistence of sociologists who in the past had alternatively identified with “scientific sociology”, “Marxist sociology”, and “national sociology”. Different ideas on the discipline rooted in diverse trajectories and intellectual capital persisted, but passions were tempered. To be sure, sociologists were not untouched by the broader and revived faith in democracy with its widespread defense of tolerance and pluralism. The shift was also influenced by the international sociological situation, in which parallel crises of Functionalism and Marxism were followed by less comprehensive (and unified) paradigms. As one former member of the Department stated, alternative views on the discipline were such that it was necessary to speak of a complex set of “sociologies” (Sidicaro 1991). Such a panorama softened epistemological hubris. Finally, and maybe more importantly, conviviality was encouraged by the diffusion of part-­ time appointments which multiplied job opportunities. Although they did not secure a full salary, the symbolic reward of lecturing at UBA (and even holding a chair) was not at all inconsiderable. By 1990 there were more than seventy chair holders, many of them with an entourage of assistant professors and young instructors.  Of course, the consensus did not include those who had taught during the military regime.

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Notwithstanding, there were some scholars with a significant record in the discipline who, despite having tried to become members of the staff, excluded themselves. Material conditions as much as student activism proved certainly uninviting for them. This was the case with some sociologists who during the military regime, confronted with the difficulties in the academic job market, had devoted themselves to market research and opinion polls. Among them were two former members of the UBA staff who had lectured in the 1960s and 1970s: Edgardo Catterberg (1944–1994) and Julio Aurelio (1943–2020). While the former was identified with “scientific sociology”, the latter had been close to the cátedras nacionales. Their accomplishments were not minor. With the return to democracy, they had become important advisors of the two main political parties, UCR and Peronism, and made regular appearances in the media trying to convince the people and the politicians about the quality and rigor of polls and, more importantly, their importance for the consolidation of democracy. Their success in predicting Alfonsín’s (unexpected) victory was in fact a major milestone in their social legitimation and the diffusion of polling (Vommaro 2008). These endeavors were combined with profitable applied research for private companies, whose budgets were always much more generous than those of politicians. And yet, despite all this, students at the UBA sociology program remained impervious and unimpressed: the radical atmosphere that had quickly prevailed at the school revealed incompatible with what these ascending sociologists had to offer. Thus, although one of them initially taught for a semester and the other tried to get tenured, they left for other institutions. Catterberg was appointed as the head of the new UBA Political Science school, which included a course on “public opinion”. Aurelio got a chair at the Lomas de Zamora National University (UNLZ for its acronym in Spanish). Unlike what happened with UBA sociology, these institutions provided them with a context in which their knowledge, experience, and social connections were more valued. Serving companies to increase sales or advising mainstream political parties to win elections based on instrumental knowledge was far from thrilling for those who identified sociology with activism and the questioning of power. With their departure, the school turned away from one of the most promising applied activities of the moment, and with one character that the media

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and the political field started to strongly associate with the discipline: the pollster. But market and opinion experts were not the only ones who failed at becoming teachers. This was also the case with some important figures of the private research institutes who tried to come back to the institution in which they had been trained and had their first teaching experiences. The return to democracy and the reorganization of the UBA program presented many of these sociologists with a dilemma.5 Should they come back to the university? There were good reasons for a positive answer: the government’s initial promises to restore the universities were tempting— its references to the “golden era” must have sounded as music in the ears of this group of sociologists who identified as disciples of Germani; the desire to come back to the main national university and to have access to wider audiences as provided by students; the desire for stability associated with a regular salary (which they weighed against the permanent and wearying seek for funding after funding). Moreover, it was not clear whether foreign philanthropies would remain as generous once democracy was restored and academic institutions “normalized”. Yet a brief experience as teachers in the UBA program was enough to discourage most of them. To be sure, neither meager salaries (in a national currency which kept losing value) were attractive for those who were able to make a living in “hard” currency, nor was the poor infrastructure and lack of material resources. Also, the conflictual and plebeian air at UBA, in which teacher strikes demanding better salaries were frequent, offered a sharp contrast to the calm and “professionalized” work culture to which they were accustomed. However, if a full-time commitment at UBA was discarded, a part-time appointment proved no less viable, because students were not very enthusiastic about what these sociologists had to offer. As political enthusiasm returned, and teaching on “hot” politicized issues was demanded, their detached sociological style, as much as their research agenda which, as was seen in Chap. 4, was greatly shaped from abroad, was not very popular. But the main issue was with their links with US philanthropic foundations, which, as in 1960s, were rejected by most students. Once again, the students’ boycott repertoire was broad  For some there were no hesitation: they would continue working at their think tanks.

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and included from small acts of resistance (such as being systematically late to classes) to the displaying of posters in the corridors denouncing “imperial funding”. The picture of “well-mannered” students eager to learn sociology they had imagined while preparing their classes was mercilessly refuted. Confronted with this belligerency, as Germani did in the past, they decided to leave. To continue teaching under those conditions would have been as “casting pearls before swine”, one interviewee remembered, not without bitterness. Their departure, as with that of the pollster, was not without consequences for the program. With the loss of the personnel who had continued their careers at the private research institutes, the program was deprived of a group of experimented sociologists who, even in the context of crowded classes, might have encouraged research activities. The episode was interesting as it pointed to the de-­ centered nature of Argentinean sociological scene: by research record, access to funding, publications, and connections to mainstream international sociology, there was no doubt that these sociologists were an “elite”, and that was indeed how they (and philanthropic foundations) saw themselves. But it was a peculiar elite, one whose talents and expertise were not valued in the most traditional local sociological institution.

From Revolution to Democracy If the representatives of “scientific sociology” distanced themselves from ideological debates, there were some members of the Marxist faction who, in the context of the return to democracy, did not hesitate to actively reenlist in openly ideological discussion. But far from keeping loyal to former beliefs in revolution and violent social change, with which some of them had flirted in the past, they did it with a revived faith on the virtues of democracy and political moderation. The establishment of a criminal military regime, which obliged them to go into exile, had a deep impact on them. No less influential was the international crisis of Marxism, which in Western Europe resulted in the emergence of Eurocommunism and a general rejection of Soviet power among leftist intellectuals. Thus, once back in Argentina, their activities were enthusiastically aimed at encouraging the consolidation of democracy. Although

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they were emphatic that their turn did not entail a desertion from the socialist creed, a new conviction of the importance of the rule of law and political pluralism prevailed. As Juan Carlos Portantiero (1934–2007), one of the most prolific Argentinean Marxist sociologists stated, Marxists had been blind to see that what they derogatorily referred as “‘bourgeois liberties’ were a fence dividing death from life” (Portantiero 1988, p. 8). To be sure, their turn to political moderation matched the broader political climate and, as such, allowed them to multiply their publics and take advantage of a varied resource base. But, as in the 1960s, when they cultivated an ambiguous profile between the academic professionalization and politicization, their activism was in no way disassociated from holding good academic positions. On the contrary, it was those positions the ones that, with the income they provided, allowed them to take part within the ideological and political controversies in the intellectual and cultural fields.6 The main academic investment of this group was not within UBA, in which they became only part-time teachers. Far from it, with the idea of competing for international funds, they created a new private research institute, the Latin American Center for the Analysis of Democracy (CLADE for its acronym in Spanish). This think tank was headed by José Nun who was certainly not interested in reediting controversies around “imperial penetration”, nor did he wish to be in the eye of the hurricane as with the Marginality Project in the 1960s (see Chap. 3). Nun was quickly joined by Juan Carlos Portantiero and Emilio de Ípola (1939–). All of them were coming back from their exiles where they had been able to go on with an academic career under very favorable conditions. Portantiero was a well-recognized sociologist with a record in the Communist Party, who in 1969 had coauthored, along with Miguel Murmis (1933–), an extremely popular book on the origins of Peronism. The book polemicized against Germani’s interpretation of Peronism from a Gramscian perspective and became a must-read among sociologists and leftist activists. de Ípola was a graduate in Philosophy with an inclination  The ideological turn, which has been cleverly synthetized as a transition from “Revolution to Democracy”, was also taking place in other countries in the South Cone and affecting many prestigious leftist Latin American intellectuals (Lechner 1986). 6

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to social theory and a significant international record: he had completed a PhD in France under the guidance of Lucien Goldmann and had lectured in Chile and Canada. The launching of CLADE proved fruitful, as generous funding started to flow. It was indeed with monies from the Ford Foundation that its most important works, edited in a widely read book entitled Ensayos sobre la transición democrática en la Argentina (Essays on Democratic Transition in Argentina), were conducted. Nun and Portantiero were the editors and provided the general framework. According to them, Argentina faced a “double-edge crisis”. On the one hand, democracy had to be established against deeply rooted authoritarian habits. Argentineans, they stressed, have lived most of the twentieth century under military regimes and consequently lacked a healthy democratic culture. On the other, economic welfare would not be achieved if major reforms were not made to well-entrenched rent-seeking practices. Things were so bad that a “new regime of socio-economic accumulation” was needed (Nun and Portantiero 1987). The recognition of the “double-­ edge” character of the crisis was somehow new, and it pointed to a major intellectual turn among Marxist sociologists: the political dimension was now conceived as autonomous from (and not reducible to) the economy. The shift was opposed to standard materialistic approaches, which were now shunned like the plague; however, it was also aimed at traditional modernization theories, because in both currents, despite their differences, the consolidation of democracy in Latin America had been depicted as a by-product of more fundamental economic and social dynamics. Now, the political was unbound from the social and the economic, and “contingency” was celebrated in the context of the crises of the “grand narratives” (Lesgart 2003). Yet, what was more compelling to these sociologists than academic discourse was their participation on more straightforward political milieus. In effect, as censorship was over and free debate on public space recovered, they enthusiastically engaged as public intellectuals promoting democracy and within it a “new” and “modern” left. With an explicit normative bent, Nun, Portantiero, and de Ípola devoted themselves to the production of a set of creative idées-forces with which they sought to edify politicians and the people and help in the nurturing of a novel and comprehensive “democratic culture”. Sociological ideas were not given up—Michel Crozier, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Alain

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Touraine were frequent sources—but they were blended with political theory and philosophy comprising references from classical Contractualism to Norberto Bobbio and John Rawls. Ingenious metaphors were proposed to make sense of the present situation and challenges. Apart from the ubiquitous idea of a “democratic pact”, the image of politics as a “conversation”, and not as the continuation of war by other means, was a permanent mantra in Portantiero and de Ípola’s interventions. With it, they questioned what they depicted as locally dominant traditions of political intolerance and violence7 (de Ípola and Portantiero 1984). The “rebellion of the chorus” was another influential formula with which Nun called for an expansion of political participation of the people and consequentially the eclipse of allegedly enlightened political vanguards (Nun 1984b). For these sociologists, a new “political sociology”, one in which the political was carefully examined, was in order. But as some observers soon noticed, it was one in which the activist prevailed over the detached observer. Scholarship was correspondingly concentrated on providing a normative framework more than on producing systematic empirical research (Sidicaro 1993). To be sure, reflections on the “what ought to be” were fundamental in connecting sociology with most urgent debates and bestowing it with wider social influence. Notwithstanding, such an approach conspired against a more realist account of the “what is”, based on a more thorough look at the attitudes toward democracy and political participation in different social groups, that is, those in which intellectuals’ ideas should be embodied (Merklen 2005). Whether as “legislators” or “interpreters”, Marxist sociologists wanted to have a say in Argentina’s way to democracy. Their distance from “scientific sociology” was as in the 1960s quite clear, and the launching of a new political think tank in 1984 was an additional piece of evidence. The new institution, called the Socialist Culture Club (CCS for its acronym in Spanish), gathered a set of prestigious leftist intellectuals (belonging to different disciplines like literary criticism, journalism, and history) and  Inspiration was also found in literature. To explain the image of politics as a conversation aimed at avoiding death and violence, which they admitted as possible outcomes of political confrontation, Portantiero and de Ípola referred to Scheherazade, the monarch’s wife in One Thousand and One Nights, and how she managed to postpone death by prolonged and unending storytelling (de Ípola and Portantiero 1984). 7

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was aimed at renewing the “socialist tradition” in accordance with the new democratic faith. By calling it a “club” they wanted to avoid two possible misunderstandings: the new venture would not be a “political party” nor would it be a mere “academic research institute” (Elizalde 2019). Ambiguous as its creators, the CCS sought to promote non-partisan intervention in the public arena from a “socialist” and “democratic” perspective. One of their main targets was those leftist intellectuals and (small) political parties that, even in the context of the crises of Marxism and general discredit of real socialism, were still entrenched in their traditional (and allegedly “anachronistic”) beliefs about revolution and social change. Against them, they did not hesitate to stress that without democracy and political pluralism, no progressive agenda could be advanced. Political liberalism, previously neglected as “bourgeois”, was then fervently reappraised. In fact, as Portantiero put it, the problem with Marxist political thinking was that it “had had too much Rousseau and not enough Locke. It was out of that excess and that absence that the temptation for Hobbes was born” (Portantiero 1984, p. 5). Of course, as they did not want to be confused with the political center—this was the accusation of the “traditional” left and of a good share of the sociology students8—they were quite emphatic in the importance of democratic “participation”. As Nun stated, democracy in Argentina should not be understood as a mere system to select authorities. Far from it. It should be conceived as “a way of life” in which the people deliberate and collectively impose their will. Drawing on a famous distinction, he proposed a “governing democracy” and not a “governed democracy” (Nun 1984a). The ideas of the members of the CCS were mainly channeled through two political-and-cultural magazines, Punto de Vista and La Ciudad Futura, in which learned and sophisticated intellectual debates were combined with political concerns and ideological position-takings. In effect, although they were not academic journals, as articles were brief and there was no double-blind peer review, they were the main channels by which  Portantiero and de Ípola were affiliated at the UBA program as professors of sociological theory. Quite predictably, students were not much enthusiastic about their turn toward political moderation. Notwithstanding, they were avid readers of their writings. 8

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new debates in the international social and humanistic disciplines were received in the local academic dismantled scenario inherited from the military regime. Punto de Vista, for example, was a pioneer in the reception of Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Williams (Martínez 2007). As such, these magazines were descendants of the numerous political and cultural journals which populated the intellectual scene in the 1960s; and like them, they were major references within the intellectual and university fields. Marxist sociologists, as well as most members of the CCS, were quite enthusiastic about Argentina’s new president. In their view the defeat of Peronism, which they associated with deeply rooted authoritarian social and political attitudes and factionalism, was a happy circumstance. Moreover, Alfonsín’s fluid relations with many progressive scholars would only increase their enthusiasm. Since his campaign, in effect, and with the idea of renewing his party’s somewhat passé doctrine, the new president revealed himself to be an avid consumer of social sciences’ new ideas. Once in office, he recruited many intellectuals to occupy influential public posts. The magnitude of the draft was such there were some think tanks, as was the case with the Center for Social Research on the State and Administration (CISEA for its acronym in Spanish), which were almost dismantled as most of its members decided to accept the president’s invitation (Elizalde 2019). The process was quite novel as leftist thinkers had traditionally been in opposition to most governments (Sigal 1991). In that context, Portantiero and de Ípola were recruited as Alfonsín’s advisors. Devoted to the discussion of the political situation and the elaboration of programmatic ideas based on current sociology and political theory and philosophy (Portantiero and de Ípola 1990), these sociologists regularly met with the president throughout his term. Their influence was not inconsequential, and soon a Rawlsian drive to think of social justice or a Weberian account of the relationship between ethics and politics could be identified in Alfonsín’s interventions. Of course, the political leader did not refrain from making personal adjustments. When, for example, he was suggested to talk about crises as “socially productive” instead of merely deleterious moments, an idea which his advisors took from current debates within Marxist Italian philosophy, the president

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agreed with the idea but seasoned it. For him, crises were productive because it was during crises that “you get to see the courage of men”. The conclusion of Alfonsín’s administration put an end to this high-profile collaboration between sociologists and presidential power. The fall of this politician, who could not keep his promises and was unable to avoid new (and again unprecedented) crises, did not go without a great disappointment on the part of Portantiero and de Ípola. In the future, without neglecting political engagement, they would concentrate more on their academic tasks.

The Eclipse of Dependency The main theoretical ideas on democracy in Argentina did not come from Latin American thinkers. Sure, regional dialogue between scholars worried about the transition from authoritarian rule was intense, and many conferences were held on the matter in different cities while dictatorships were still on the ascent. Relationships established during exile had also been a “Latino Americanizing” vector for many social scientists (Garreton et al. 2005). But the study of democracy and its possibilities, in contrast to the former scholarship about imperialism, marginality, and class struggle in the 1960s within Argentinean sociology, did not come hand in hand with an explicit concern with the nurturing of a more “national” or “regional” outlook. In the 1980s, after the traumatic experience of the military regime, those kinds of worries were strongly associated with the kind of radical activism with which intellectuals rediscovering the goodness of democratic institutions were trying to break with. This turn, it is worth noting, had a regional scope as most influential Latin American scholars came increasingly to see dependency theory as too simplistic, “ideologized”, and lacking in rigor (Beigel 2019). The deferral of “social liberation” had not been without consequences for “national liberation”. And as a matter of fact, criticism of “imperialism” seemed somehow as outdated as the desire to produce “national” (and “original”) concepts. The shift was clear in the UBA program. The renewed curricula did not give Argentinian and Latin American sociology (nor classic local

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essayers) a prominent place. Locally produced scholarship was to a great extent neglected, and the initial idea of including a mandatory course entitled “Latin American sociology” was later abandoned (Comisión Curricular Permanente 1985). The effects were especially tangible on the theoretical courses, which almost excluded scholars who did not come from Europe or the United States. Thus, for example, in the courses offered by Portantiero, except for some minor exceptions, there were no Latin American authors, a situation which contrasted with the courses he delivered on the same matter in the 1960s, where special units were devoted to examine concepts like “dependency” and “underdevelopment”. Now authors like Mexican Pablo González Casanova (1922–), Brazilian Celso Furtado (1920–2004), and Theotonio dos Santos (1936–2018), all examples of radical Latin American social sciences, were displaced by (more fashionable) European thinkers as Foucault and Habermas. Thus, in a vein which was reminiscent of the neglect of the “scientific sociology” of local thinkers in the 1950s, theory was again treated as an essentially importable good. There were, nevertheless, some exceptions. Two former members of the cátedras nacionales, Horacio González (1944–) and Alcira Argumedo (1940–), joined the program and carved a niche for themselves defending the importance and value of Argentinean and Latin American intellectual traditions. They did this, though, with a much milder spirit than in the 1960s. What is interesting to note, however, is that the way in which they dealt with those traditions reproduced the former opposition between professionalized academic sociology and the essayistic approach. That opposition, as was seen in Chap. 2, was originally put forward by Germani and his collaborators and later, as a backlash, reinforced by the cátedras nacionales. As a result, the study of local intellectual traditions was once more associated with a protest against empirically informed versions of the discipline, in the way that by that moment was deployed within the private research institutes.

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References Adair, Jennifer. 2020. In Search of the Lost Decade. Everyday Rights in Post-­ Dictatorship Argentina. Oakland: University of California Press. Beigel, Fernanda. 2019. Latin American Sociology: A Centennial Regional Tradition. In Key Texts for Latin American Sociology, ed. Fernanda Beigel. SAGE. Biglaiser, Glen. 2009. The Internationalization of Ideas in Argentina’s Economics Profession. In Economists in the Americas, ed. Verónica Montecinos and John Markoff, 63–99. Northampton: Edward Elgar. Buchbinder, Pablo. 2005. Historia de las universidades argentinas. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Buchbinder, Pablo, and Mónica Marquina. 2008. Masividad, heterogeneidad y fragmentación. el sistema universitario argentino 1983–2007. Los Polvorines: UNGS. Carrera, Cecilia. 2019. Las asociaciones profesionales de sociología en Argentina y las disputas por la ‘profesión’. Revista Temas Sociológicos (25): 87–124. Comisión Curricular Permanente. 1985. Proyecto de Reforma Curricular de la Carrera de Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires. Elizalde, Josefina. 2019. La reconfiguración del campo cultural en la transición democrática: el Club de Cultura Socialista y sus funciones. Revista Temas de Historia Argentina y Americana 2 (27): 63–93. Garretón, Manuel Antonio, Miguel Murmis, Gerónimo de Sierra, and Hélgio Trindade. 2005. Social Sciences in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. Social Science Information 44 (2–3): 557–593. https://doi. org/10.1177/0539018405053297. Heredia, Mariana, and Claudia Daniel. 2019. The Taming of Prices. Framing and Fighting Inflation in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century in Argentina. Economic Sociology_The European Economic Newsletter 20 (2): 6–14. de Ípola, Emilio, and Juan Carlos Portantiero. 1984. Crisis social y pacto democrático. Punto de Vista (21): 13–20. Lechner, Norbert. 1986. De la revolución a la democracia. La Ciudad Futura (2): 33–35. Lesgart, Cecilia. 2003. Usos de la transición a la democracia. Ensayo, ciencia y política en la década del ’80. Rosario: Homo Sapiens.

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Martínez, Ana. 2007. Lecturas y lectores de Bourdieu en la Argentina. Prismas 11: 11–30. Merklen, Denis. 2005. Pobres Ciudadanos. Las clases populares en la era democrática (1983–2003). Buenos Aires: Gorla. Nun, José. 1984a. Democracia y socialismo: etapas o niveles? Punto de Vista (22): 21–26. ———. 1984b. La rebelión del coro. Punto de Vista 7 (20): 6–11. Nun, José, and Juan Carlos Portantiero. 1987. Prefacio. In Ensayos sobre la transición democrática en la Argentina, ed. José Nun and Juan Carlos Portantiero, 9–11. Buenos Aires: Puntosur. Portantiero, Juan Carlos. 1984. Socialismo y democracia. Una relación difícil. Punto de Vista VII (20): 1–5. ———. 1988. La Construcción de un orden. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. Portantiero, Juan Carlos, and Emilio de Ípola. 1990. Luces y sombras de un discurso trascendente. La Ciudad Futura (25/26). Sidicaro, Ricardo. 1991. Las sociologías después de Parsons. Sociedad (1). ———. 1993. Reflexiones sobre la accidentada trayectoria de la sociología en la Argentina. Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 517–519: 65–76. Sigal, Silvia. 1991. Intelectuales y poder en Argentina: la década del Sesenta. Buenos Aires: Puntosur. Vommaro, Gabriel. 2008. “Lo que quiere la Gente”. Los sondeos de opinión y el espacio de la comunicación política en Argentina (1983–1999). Buenos Aires: Prometeo-UNGS. Wainerman, Catalina. 1984. Concurso de Metodología. Buenos Aires.

6 Academic Professionalization and the Making of Sociology as a Consultant Profession (1989 to the Present)

Abstract  From the 1990s on, political and economic instability in Argentina has been constant and perplexing. Nevertheless, as democracy proved enduring and shifts in government were not followed by changes within scholarly institutions, a process of unprecedented cumulative institutionalization was triggered. Public universities multiplied, and traditionally underdeveloped graduate programs expanded. Neither in the 1990s, when there prevailed a neoliberal orientation, nor in the 2000s, when progressive administrations were in power, did the discipline become an explicit focus of scientific policies. Yet, sociology took advantage of the multiplication of full-time posts, and not without difficulties—as times of plenty alternated with times of want—it became a full-fledged discipline. At the same time, as many non-academic institutions within the state, the corporate world, and the third sector started to hire sociologists, a “practical turn” followed. Applied sociology was on the rise, even when undergraduate programs proved indifferent to this new situation. Keywords  Academic professionalization • Graduate programs • CONICET • Consultancy • Practical turn © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_6

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From Crisis to Crisis Between 1990 and 2019, there was a troubled succession of governments with extremely different political and economic orientations. More often than not, each administration took office in the context of a profound (and seemingly terminal) economic and social crisis which, on a cyclical basis, led the new authorities to try 180-degree turns. Yet in contrast with the past, crises did not trigger a coup. A general social consensus, which included both the elites and the people, kept the military to their quarters. Still, while democracy proved able to undergo tough tests, severe economic difficulties were frequent, as was intense social deterioration. Although it secured the first succession between two democratically elected presidents in more than fifty years, Alfonsín’s government (1983–1989) did not have a happy ending. A crisis of hyperinflation in 1989 forced him to resign six months before his term was to expire. Shortages in food were followed by riots and supermarket lootings, while annual inflation exceeded 3000%. His successor, Carlos Menem (1989–1999), was a Peronist, whose rise was fueled by populist discourse and who promised an immediate rise in salaries. But once in power, he neglected Peronism’s traditional repertoire and embraced the neoliberal creed. Efforts to tame inflation were radical: privatizations of all state companies, trade liberalization, and deregulation of markets and labor followed. Initially, market-friendly policies proved successful and brought stability and growth. The euphoria was such that while Menem announced Argentina was “joining the First World”, IMF’s authorities introduced the country to the world as an example to instruct less reform-oriented governments. However, stability came at a high price. Many formerly protected industries were dismantled, and unemployment became an extended problem. The “structural adjustment” of the economy did not have, as some officers of UNICEF had asked for, a “human face” (Jolly 1991). A recession aggravated the situation, and foreign debt proved unaffordable. In 2001, in the context of a new social explosion another UCR president, who in 1999 had replaced Menem, resigned. Argentina was in free fall: at a time when poverty affected half of the population and unemployment

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peaked at 25%, the government announced the largest financial default in modern world history. People took the streets in the main cities under the slogan “All of them [the politicians] must go!” [Qué se vayan todos!]. Four presidents were forced out in the final ten days of 2001. The country was no longer an example, at least not one the IMF could proudly display. And yet, by 2003, the economy surprisingly resurrected and the political system, against all odds, normalized. The new president, Peronist Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007), and later his wife, Cristina Fernández (2007–2015), who succeeded him for two terms, enthusiastically enrolled their administrations in the turn to the left which characterized many Latin American governments in the 2000s (Levitsky and Roberts 2011). Repudiating supply-side economics, they promoted protectionism, fueled industrial growth, and nationalized some important companies. Peronism, the Kirchner’s said, was going back to its ideological roots. While his administration pointed to the IMF as a major cause of Argentina’s misfortune, in 2005 it paid (cash and in one payment) all its debts to this institution, seeking “economic sovereignty”. Boosted by the 2000s’ commodities boom, the economy achieved an unprecedented expansion. However, inflation came back and political polarization weakened the Peronist hegemony, so in 2015 a right-wing coalition was elected. The newcomers did not take long to embrace neoliberal policies and market-­ friendly policies, whose results could hardly have been worse. In only two years, after running up massive foreign debts, financial assistance from the IMF was (again) sought. The loan that was agreed to was the highest ever granted in the Fund’s history. President Mauricio Macri (2015–2019) was so excited that he declared: “we hope the entire country will have a crush on Christine (Lagarde, IMF Managing Director)” (Bio 2018). The deal, which required big cuts in public expenditure, proved fruitless: by 2019 the country could not service its debts, unemployment increased, and inflation rose to an annual rate of more than 50%. As may be expected, the universities and scientific field were not protected from this volatility and zigzagging. As their economic resource base was mostly dependent on the public budget, scholars’ opportunities to do research and teach were quite dependent on economic cycles.

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Moments of dearth, in which job opportunities were few, alternated with times of relative abundance. However, despite instability, things had changed. From the 1990s on, there was a process of unprecedented cumulative institutionalization in academic life because, unlike in the past, shifts in government were not followed by changes within the professoriate and scholarly institutions. Without politically motivated purges, routinization ensued, as did the chance to follow a more stable— yet not without difficulty—academic career. What is more, despite the divergences between Menem’s and both of the Kirchner’s administrations, there were major continuities in their scientific policies, which resulted in a convergent trend toward the professionalization and expansion of research and teaching capacities. During the 1990s, the neoliberal government promoted research in universities by improving the salaries of all those professors who were engaged in research activities. This was not inconsequential, as this activity, as discussed in Chap. 5, had been sacrificed in favor of increased teaching loads which had been triggered by open enrollments. Additionally, given the professoriate’s lack of training, graduate programs were promoted in all fields. Also, quality assessment and accreditation mechanism were encouraged, and therefore individuals and universities started to be regularly evaluated. Although CONICET remained underfunded and had a near-death experience, a new research agency, the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Promotion, was launched to support investigation, modeled on the US National Science Foundation. These innovations did not occur without resistance, as they established competition for funds among scholars and, consequently, contributed to stratify a professoriate whose salaries until that moment depended more on rank and years in their posts than on individual merit. Moreover, with the intention of reducing the traditional concentration of the students at UBA, seven public universities were created (which added to the existing twenty), along with a myriad of private ones. This “modernizing” agenda had the support of the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-­ American Development Bank (IDB), whose loans funded many of these policies. The most controversial issue revolved around the establishment of fees at public universities, which was insistently encouraged by these

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international institutions. This was successfully resisted by students, and universities continued to be free of tuition, but also underfunded. During the 2000s, as the economy flourished, worries on public deficit were left behind, and a generous scientific policy was promoted. Quite astonishingly, twenty-two new public universities were launched, and CONICET was revived with a remarkable multiplication of full-time posts and doctoral fellowships. Between 2003 and 2015 the former went from 3579 to 9236 and the latter from 2351 to 8868 respectively (Beigel et  al. 2018). The creation of a new Science and Technology Ministry (MINCyT for its Spanish acronym) in 2007 was an additional proof of the government wager on science. To be sure, this expansion contrasted with neoliberal austerity. Nevertheless, resources were channeled through an institutional framework whose foundations had been laid in the previous years. A major shift, however, followed the reestablishment of a neoliberal administration in 2016. While CONICET’s expansion was quickly slowed down, public universities also experienced a severe budget reduction. And as the economic crises got worse, wages were significantly eroded as much as research funds. During this administration, state investment in science dropped by 36% while the salaries of CONICET researchers dropped more than 40% (Slipczuk 2020). Neither in the 1990s nor in the 2000s was sociology an explicit focus of scientific policies. Unsurprisingly, public officials, both neoliberal and progressives, were much more interested in favoring technology and the applied natural sciences. Still, sociology, along with the other social and human sciences, took great advantage of the growth of universities, the expansion of graduate programs, and the multiplication of teaching and research posts. A partially and ill-institutionalized discipline, which had been undeveloped at the level of graduate studies and lacked stable public research institutions, finally became a full-fledged discipline. For a large share of sociologists, the goal of becoming a full-time academic was now more than an illusion. But expansion was not limited to academia. Far from it, many state agencies, private companies, consulting firms, as well as NGOs recruited sociologists, and many new niches emerged and consolidated, in which sociologists were able to offer their particular expertise and reach

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influential positions. It is worth noting that Argentina has the fifth number of think tanks in the world, following such big countries as the United States, India, China, and the United Kingdom (McGann 2020). A “practical turn” then followed and the meanings and habits traditionally associated with the discipline multiplied. As a consequence, the battlefield around what the discipline was and ought to be was expanded and diversified (Rubinich and Beltrán 2010). Although undergraduate programs proved reluctant to adjust to this new situation, applied sociology was on the rise.

 cademic Expansion in Times of Plenty A and Times of Want Despite general instability and cyclic crises, the end of purges within the professoriate and public institutions benefited sociology; with stability came the multiplication of undergraduate programs (10 were launched in this period) in different public universities throughout the country. This led to the lessening of the traditional centrality of the undergraduate program at UBA which, as was seen on previous chapters, had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the training of the new generations of sociologists. The process was, nevertheless, gradual: in 2001 it still had 67% of the students, 59% in 2009, and 48% in 2017 (SCEU 2020). There were also some programs in private universities, but in general they did not have many students. In contrast to political science, which had made its way on some elite private universities, sociology programs remained largely limited to public universities. Evidently, although the expansion of undergraduate programs resulted in many new teaching jobs, in general they were not full-time. Student demand was enough to fuel the expansion, even though it was quite clear that, in contrast with what happened in the 1960s, sociology was no longer among the most attractive undergraduate programs. While between 2001 and 2017 the total number of students at all universities increased by more than 40%, sociology’s share grew only 10%. What is more, from 2010 to 2017 there was a standstill in enrollments, in

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contrast to neighboring disciplines (like Psychology, History, Economy, or Political Science) which grew between 16 and 25% (SCEU 2020). At the same time, and more importantly to the professionalization of academic sociology, graduate studies expanded impressively. As was seen on previous chapters, quaternary level had remained underdeveloped in Argentina. Many reasons accounted for that: the organization of studies along the lines of “long” undergraduate programs (licenciaturas) which, after five or six years, granted professional identity, a tendency to neglect research in universities, political instability, and a lack of material and human resources. Sociology was no exception; hence those who wanted to get a PhD had to travel abroad. During the 1990s, master’s programs were the first new programs to be launched, followed in the next decade by doctoral programs. Most of the new degree offering were in “social science” paving the way for a greater interaction between sociologists and other social scientists. Master’s in social sciences, in which the greater part had a vocational orientation, skyrocketed: from 2001 to 2017 they went from 37 to 493, while the number of academic PhDs programs rose to 17 (SCEU 2020). At UBA alone more than 800 individuals got their PhD in Social Sciences between 2002 and 2019. Not surprisingly, the institutionalization of graduate studies made a difference in the situation for sociology as it bestowed the academic career with a clearer path, while it undermined the traditional ascendancy of the undergraduate. Having a PhD became indeed a basic requirement for the younger generations who wanted to climb the academic professional ladder up, especially at the CONICET (Beigel et al. 2018). For senior sociologists, holding a chair in a licenciatura remained, to be sure, a source of prestige (and income), but lecturing for graduate students became more and more important. Moreover, the expansion of graduate programs gave a major boost to research activities. On many cases, these studies were conducted in the framework of research teams gathered around one or two senior researchers who supervised activities and recruited fresh graduates as research assistants. The creation of these teams, which made work less individual, was encouraged within universities by the allocation of some funding which stimulated collective research. Although in the social science those funds were in general quite small, they provided for some basic expenses of academic life like (minor) field work, travel allowance, and conference

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fees. They were also influential in relation to publishing as they were used to subsidize printing costs of books which otherwise, given its limited public, no editorial house would have been interested in printing. At UBA, this allowed for the strengthening of the Institute of Sociology, an organization which, after the launching of the Faculty of Social Sciences (FCS) in 1990, started to gather colleagues from other programs and was consequently converted into an institute of “social sciences”.1 The cumulative development of sociology (and other social sciences) within public institutions was not inconsequential for the private research institutes. As was seen on previous chapters, most of the empirical research that had been conducted in the past was performed by these institutes. Now, while they continued to have close connections with foreign donors, they lost their centrality as research settings. However, their influence did not wane, because the expansion of research, along with the need of experienced personnel to supervise dissertations and lecture in new graduate programs, was a major drive toward the revalorization of “scientific sociology”. One will recall that “scientific sociologists” were not warmly welcomed at the politicized UBA undergraduate program. But now the professionalization of academic life resulted in a rise in their status and power. As evidence of this, two new public universities, the National University of General Sarmiento (UNGS) and the National University of San Martín (UNSAM), established an agreement with IDES, one of the main private think tanks, to jointly launch two graduate programs, one in social science and the other in anthropology. While the universities contributed with their capacity to award diplomas, IDES did it with its highly qualified human resources. Still, during the 1990s, the professionalization of academic sociology took place within the context of a quite limited material resource base. There were some individuals who managed to get funds to do research and get appointed to some of the new posts which the expansion of  As more and more scholars, pertaining to different social sciences, were enrolled through the years, research areas multiplied. As such, it became a major point of orientation for those senior students at the undergraduate UBA program who were willing to start an academic career or at least to have some research experience. Today, with a staff of 260 researchers, 115 research, and 248 fellows, distributed in 50 research groups, this institute is the biggest among UBA’s research institutes and one of the biggest in Latin America (IIGG 2020). 1

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universities (and under and graduate programs) allowed for. But, in general, wages remained low, which led to frequent strikes. At UBA, for example, an associate full-time professor might earn as little as 1100 US dollars per month, a sum that was 30% lower than what they made before the crises of hyperinflation in 1989. A part-time adjunct would only get 147 US dollars.2 What is more, ad honorem posts became widespread among professors and instructors in this university as the expansion of enrolments grew while budgets remained fairly the same (or were even cut). By 2007 almost a half of the sociology undergraduate program’s staff were unpaid (Blois 2012). At CONICET things were not much better, as Menem’s administration froze salaries and new posts (Beigel and Sorá 2019), while doctoral fellowships were hardly generous enough to pay the bills. This situation bestowed academic life with an ascetic taste and led many scholars, both senior and juniors, to add extra jobs to their workdays. Some added part-time teaching loads in different institutions, while others made incursions in the expanding consulting job market (see below). In contrast to former generations, they were academic “professionals”, but without the chance to devote all their time to their (allegedly exclusive) tasks. Budgetary constraints were also visible in infrastructure. At UBA, the Faculty of Social Science was given a new building near Buenos Aires downtown, which was much better than the basements of the Faculty of Law and Social Science (FDyCS) (see Chap. 4). However, the new premises did not take long to prove inadequate. They were a former maternity unit which was not conceived to house a school, and as such it did not have halls, cafeterias, auditoriums, or rooms for the staff (Bonaldi 2009). It was also small: during peak hours, when more classes were being delivered, its corridors and stairs used to overflow with crowds of students trying to patiently get to their classrooms. The problem was such that two programs, Communication Studies and Political Science, were moved to another building. The research institute was in no better condition as it was placed on the sixth floor of a nearby (and deteriorated) building. As it did not have enough room, most of its personnel eventually became  During the economic crisis of 2002, salaries were so eroded by inflation that some full-time professors were at the verge of falling into poverty. 2

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accustomed to working at a home-office and to having many of its meetings at cafes. Within the sociology program, this poverty was especially tangible in the methodology classes, which were conducted without computers, although the teachers spoke about how new statistical software (like the SPSS) was changing data processing. Relying only on chalk and a blackboard, these classes had an anachronistic air, which contrasted with the foundational times in the 1950s when a new computer was bought by Germani and his collaborators. As may be expected, the orientation of research was not immune to limited funding, and the lack of funds and equipment resulted in the expansion of qualitative and case-study inquiries. In-depth interviews, life-stories, and ethnographic observation, along with archival analysis, were certainly much more affordable than large-scale quantitative research. Of course, the reappraisal of qualitative approaches in the 1990s was not without connection to the crisis of the orthodox consensus depicted by Giddens, the rise of social constructivism, and an increased concern with culture and social identities (Calvo et  al. 2020). But the warm local reception of qualitative strategies was inseparable from the financial fragility affecting sociology (as well as the social sciences in general). There were, of course, sociologists in academia who pursued quantitative studies, but except for those working in private research institutes who had foreign funding, data was in general drawn from state statistics offices (on labor, poverty, class, voting). One of the most influential books within the sociological scene at the end of the 1990s was a compilation, entitled Desde abajo. La transformación de las identidades sociales (From Below. Transformations of Social Identities) (Svampa 2000), in which qualitative methods played the starring role. Attuned with contemporary scholarship on reflexive modernity and individualization as developed by Giddens, Beck, and others, and with French debates on the métamorphoses de la question sociale, its authors examined changes in social identities brought about by (deleterious) neoliberal economic transformations. For this, they embarked on detailed and lively studies about the experience of downward mobility among traditional workers and the middle classes, who were subjected to precarious work and waning income, paying special attention to the situation of their descendants who had to deal with a much tougher labor market and a welfare state in retreat. Crises of the “wage earning society”, the “new

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poverty”, “disaffiliation”, as well as new forms of political organization among the (growing) corps of the poor and paupers, were the main issues. As social frames inherited by the “first modernity” were in crisis, and a new individualism (with greater degrees of freedom but also menaced by anomy) was on the rise, the authors called for an approach “from below”, that is to say from the changing subjectivity of those individuals placed at the bottom of society. The emphasis on empirical research was also a reaction against the normative approach which, as was seen in Chap. 5, molded much of sociologists’ views on democracy during the 1980s. As one of the contributors to the book later contended, it was necessary to bring “the social” back in against abstract ideas of “pure citizens” and “formal democracy”: sociologists had to engage in field work to go beyond preconceptions and subjective judgment (Merklen 2005). If formerly engagement and the role of public intellectual were valued, the new generation defended a more “detached” and “grounded” approach which was much more attuned to the demands of their professionalized jobs. Academic professionalization within sociology was given a significant boost in the following decade when economic prosperity and the pro-­ science Kirchners’ administrations resulted in generous budgets for public universities and (a downhearted) CONICET. At these institutions, jobs multiplied, especially at the latter where, taking advantage of the new era, the social and human sciences could balance the traditional predominance of the natural and exact sciences. If by 1983, only a 15% of the total staff was affiliated within these disciplines, their share had reached 22% by 2015 (Beigel and Sorá 2019). The absolute evolution is perhaps clearer: the number of full-time researchers went from 705  in 2003 to 2245 in 2016. The increase in PhD fellowships was even greater, going from 493 to 2896 in the same period (Piovani 2018). Salaries also recovered: if by 2001 payment level at UBA was (represented by an index value) of 100, by 2009 it had reached 156 (after a critical moment in 2004 when inflation took it to 66). Consequently, those with full-time appointments had the chance to devote themselves to their academic tasks on an exclusive basis, although the habit of taking many jobs persisted, as wages, though much improved, were still low compared to wages in other countries in the region, such as Brazil, Chile, or Mexico.

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As may be expected, the increasing number of scholars was followed by an explosion of research topics. New areas like gender studies, culture, economy, or social movements, thrived, along with more traditional ones like political sociology, the sociology of work, or social structure studies. Quite insightfully, albeit not without a certain exaggeration, in 2003 Portantiero summed up the evolution of the main concerns within the social sciences in Argentina (as well as in Latin America) between the 1950s and 1980s as a succession of three big D’s: Development, Dependency, and Democracy (Portantiero 2005). If later a new D was added for Disaffiliation to make reference to the 1990s (Svampa 2008), from the 2000s on, it would be extremely hard to single out a topic that could encompass all scholarship that was conducted subsequently. Nevertheless, continuities with the 1990s were quite clear in work styles, which were in general characterized by constrained scopes and empirically grounded inquiries. Qualitative and socio-historic approaches prevailed, making room for the actor’s discourse and social constructivism (Benzecry and Heredia 2017). Thus, even in the fat years, large and quantitative studies remained unusual (Piovani 2018). Of course, the nature of fellowships and appointments offered by CONICET, which were decided upon the evaluation of individual projects, favored the presentation of statements in which the production of information could be done by the candidate himself and with a small budget (Calvo et  al. 2020). Bigger promises could make the evaluators suspicious about its feasibility and the candidate’s realism. The explosion in case-based studies which followed cannot be dissociated from these incentives. But also, and may be more decisively, albeit funding was greatly expanded in the 2000s, it “prioritized micro-grants scattered across the various institutions and research teams, discouraging large-scale projects” (Piovani 2017). Moreover, as outlays did not always stick to the calendar and sometimes were delayed more than a year, planning and executing ambitious studies in which the coordination of many agents was necessary became arduous. This, is worth noting, was aggravated by inflation which, especially from 2011, started to rise and consequently eroded the value of the money well before it was delivered to its recipients. Macroeconomic instability did not combine well with large-scale studies.

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There was an important exception. In 2012, a big and unprecedented program was launched to gather new quantitative information on broad social trends. The inquiry comprised the launching of three national surveys on social structure, social relations, and values and attitudes. An army of researchers pertaining to different social sciences was gathered to conduct field work in 339 cities. The study, apart from offering new and comprehensive quantitative data, was also important, as it provided information on the different regions of the country, counterbalancing the focus on the metropolitan area which traditionally characterizes Argentinean scholarship. It is worth noting that, albeit generously funded by the Ministry of Science, the project was not strictly speaking a wanted child. Far from it, the project served as a sort of a peace offering the minister was forced to grant after stating, in an in-depth interview with a national journal, that social sciences were not scientific and that they were then comparable to “theology”. For him, a renowned chemist who had made a name in the field of cow cloning, preference should have been given to more profitable areas as software development, nanotechnology, and biotechnology (Piovani 2017).

 rofessionalization of the Academic Career P and Its Critics One of the most influential aspects of academic professionalization was the dissemination and expanded role of evaluation and peer assessment mechanisms in the procedures of admission and promotion for those wanting to climb the academic ladder. These mechanisms were not totally new in the local scenario as, as was seen on previous chapters, those working in the private research institutes were quite familiar with them. But these evaluative mechanisms now became ubiquitous, and as audits and the audit culture expanded, new habits were formed. Individuals had to master the novel art of filling forms, writing reports, and patiently collecting certificates which attested to the truth of their reports. The application forms for getting a fellowship, funding, or a post at CONICET,

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and the items they established as the most critical, became a determining compass guiding decisions and judgments on research and teaching. This trend did not affect everyone in the academic field in the same manner. As may be expected, the younger generations, who had to make a room for themselves in a competitive job market, were more subject to the new demands. The same holds true for those working at CONICET. As Beigel et al. (2018) have pointed out, the expansion of scientific capacities and graduate programs which took place from the 1990s resulted in the conformation of differentiated circuits of recognition rooted in two different institutional settings: public universities, on one hand, and CONICET, on the other. And although accreditation became routine at public universities and research activities gained importance, large differences remained. At universities, publishing demands were lower, and scholars tended to channel their production toward local journals with limited circulation, while at CONICET scholars were increasingly expected to publish at a greater pace and in international, indexed journals. The rise of the scientific paper, as in other Latin American countries, was inexorable (Piovani 2018) and the “publish or perish” mandate became a lived reality for a greater share of the sociologists, shaping their research practices and writing strategies. In response, new refereed journals were launched. Among the first was Sociedad, an outlet created in 1991 by the Faculty of Social Science at UBA, which was followed by many others: of the thirty-five sociological journals that were active in 2014, sixteen were founded in the 1990s and other sixteen since 2001 (Beigel and Salatino 2015). To a great degree, this was to the detriment of political and cultural magazines which were so important in the past, as was seen in Chaps. 3 and 5. These publications might still be visible within the intellectual field and bestowed its contributors with a certain amount of prestige, but as they were not refereed, they could not help losing ascendancy among the younger generations. Still, the expansion of scientific journals was not without difficulties. It was not rare that editorial teams did not have dedicated funding and were thus largely dependent on personal efforts, something which conspired against regularity, and against international indexation (Beigel and Salatino 2015). Thus, in contrast to other cases, such as Brazil or Mexico,

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where there are long-established scientific journals and there is a consensual hierarchy among them, sociological journals proved insufficient in Argentina to channel the rise in paper production triggered by academic professionalization. Therefore, a trend toward publishing abroad followed. Internationalization was favored by the CONICET evaluative culture (Beigel and Bekerman 2019), but the exportation of papers was also greatly conditioned by the relative lack of local outlets (Blanco and Wilkis 2018). It is worth noting that, opposed to other peripheral sociological fields where publishing in mainstream international English journals was encouraged, as in Chile or the Arab East (Hanafi 2011), Argentinean sociologists predominantly oriented their papers toward Brazilian, Mexican, and Spanish outlets. In doing so, they produced a heterodox or “peripheral internationalization” (Blanco and Wilkis 2018). If this diminished their presence in the international central circuits, it offered them the chance of getting published without incurring translation costs and, more importantly, without the need to tailor their ideas and topics in the formats and agendas favored in those circuits. In effect, as Piovani (2018) has shown, the traditional IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) arrangement, which is so common in international mainstream journals, was quite marginal in the Argentinean social sciences. Nevertheless, the channeling of papers within a regional circuit did not necessarily entail a neglect of scholarship produced in the “global north”: it was to the United States and Europe, and especially France,3 where local social scientists, including sociologists, looked for inspiration, especially in theories and methods, while Latin American scholarship remained, despite major social similarities, much less cited (Piovani 2018). As might be expected, the professionalization of academic life encouraged a growing “detachment” among sociologists. There were those who  France is a strong reference for most sociologists in Argentina. During the 1990s, when local doctorate programs were still not available, France was by far the main destination for those who wanted to get a PhD (45%), followed by Brazil and Mexico (21.5%), Spain (13.7), and the United States  (9.8%) (Blanco and Wilkis 2018). This influence was also visible in book translations. According to Sorá and Dujovne (2018), the edition of French titles in the social and human sciences doubled those coming from the United States and England. Given this, it was not uncommon for local sociologists to pay attention to theories or ideas produced in the United States once they had been discussed in the French intellectual milieu. 3

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kept a strong commitment to outreach activities, but as purely academic endeavors were the most rewarded by CONICET, an orientation to the discipline itself predominated. Undergraduate students continued as a relevant public, but graduate students, subject to the new rules of the academic game, counterbalanced their influence. Thus, even when clearly “hot” issues on the public agenda (poverty and social inequality, crime, politics) were dealt with, they frequently tended to be conceptualized as “public problems” (Benzecry and Heredia 2017), avoiding an overt normative tone or ideological position-taking, other than a diffuse liberal stance. There were even those who, linking the social sciences with the humanities, defended the importance of their inquiries based on the idea of knowledge as an end in itself. This orientation did not entail that sociologists were indifferent to opportunities to appear in the media or the press. On the contrary, being interviewed or publishing a column was sought after, and the results enthusiastically shared with peers and social media. These achievements might not be decisive at CONICET but were a good way of making a name within the sociological community. What is more, one of the most traditional and prestigious publishing houses in the social and human sciences, Siglo XXI, aimed its titles at a larger non-specialist audience (it never prints less than 3000 copies and never asks for funding from the author) (Baranger 2020). Sociologists who published with them had to tailor their scholarly writing to the requirement of being attractive in the shelves of bookshops. Still, for those who were engaged in a professional career, sociology and politics were two clearly separate games. The activist as much as the public intellectual were now to a great extent passé. Not surprisingly, academic professionalization did not advance without harsh criticism, especially from some representatives of the older generations, but also from those who, without the opportunity (or the intention) to join the CONICET, were able to make a living without the constraints it imposed. Some questioned the increasing “bureaucratization” of academic life and its new and pervasive audit culture. Others questioned increased productivity, as resulted from the strengthened publishing demands, and denounced a “writing mania” in which “the pages that repeat the same thing are multiplied [and in which the] important thing is no longer what is said but the capacity to do well on

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productivity indexes” (Caletti 2003, p. 273). Moreover, there were professors whose main tasks were at the undergraduate level who complained about the “devaluation” of the licenciatura, which was menaced not only by the expansion of graduate programs but also by scholars who, worried about their next paper, did not take its teaching demands seriously. But the main flak was targeted at the growing separation of sociologists from activism and at what was depicted as “individual careerism”. It is worth noting there were those who celebrated detachment as was conceived as an essential condition to break away with “normative” sociology in favor of a “scientific” approach. But criticism of the “domestication” of “a once critical discipline” did not take long to surface. This was the case when a group of professors, led by a former member of the cátedras nacionales Horacio González, launched in 1991 a political-cultural journal, entitled El ojo mocho, which defended the essayistic tradition against the scientific paper and vindicated philosophy, literature, and aesthetics against allegedly short-sighted academic (and empiricist) “specialization”. As they searched for inspiration in the past, it is worth noting that a move toward the recovery of the cátedras nacionales was started in its pages: their former criticisms of “scientific sociology” and of the idea of sociology as a profession matched the current needs of those who could not (or did not want) to jump on the trend toward “professionalization”. Criticism continued when academic posts and fellowships were significantly expanded after 2003. It was contended that there was an “excessive professionalization” and a “hegemonic” academic model which deleteriously dissociated “scholarship and political commitment” (Svampa 2008). There were some who sarcastically referred to the “resume’s worker”, a new character whose libido was directed more toward meticulously expanding his CV than on doing socially relevant research. In this vein, Lucas Rubinich (1955–), the director of the UBA undergraduate program between 2004 and 2010 and one of the main critics of academic professionalization as it was taking place, warned in 2007 against an “individualized and depoliticized” scientific system that encourages “credential minorities” who did not hesitate to “subordinate themselves to the academic agenda imposed from abroad” (Rubinich and Langieri 2007). Afraid that the new situation suffocated the traditional critical spirit of local sociology, he was quite straightforward in an interview with

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a newspaper: “You may either desperately chase funding or you may ask critical questions to think about Argentina in a vital way” (Lorca 2007). And yet, despite criticism, academic professionalization consolidated itself over time. Given the significant expansion of academic job opportunities, the anti-academic strategy, which had been not uncommon in the past, was now more costly as there was much more to lose.

Sociology as a Consultant Profession Although the expansion of the research and teaching capacities was remarkable, the academic job market was far from providing a post to all those young sociologists who each year completed their licenciatura. In times of plenty, chances to get a fellowship to do graduate studies or a post at universities or CONICET greatly improved, but even then, the academic ladder remained in general an option only for the few: it was estimated that despite the recent expansion only 20% of the sociologists who graduated since 1990 held academic appointments (Blanco and Wilkis 2018). In that context, a “practical turn” within the discipline followed, and many individuals, albeit not always enthusiastically, explored other professional options outside of academia. To their surprise, opportunities were numerous as different institutions were revealed to be quite welcoming to applied research and other “social” tasks—or in Burawoy’s terms (2005) “policy sociology”. Still, despite some attempts by CPS as were mentioned in Chap. 5, no exclusive jurisdiction was established for sociologists. Among the main recruiters were different state agencies which, from the 1990s and in the context of the rationalizing neoliberal policies of the time, were encouraged to hire more university degree holders. According to IMF and the WB, this was crucial to improve bureaucratic efficiency. Although sociologists were employed in many areas, there were some niches in which their basic knowledge of methods and quantitative research was decisive. This was the case, for example, with social policy. Faced with the harmful consequences of structural adjustment, the WB, along with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), decided to invest heavily on improving local statistics on poverty and promoted

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programs for social relief. To carry this out required a new expertise in identifying the poor and paupers in need of assistance. Their monies were also crucial in the launching of state agencies and think tanks, which offered attractive opportunities for many sociologists who (along with economists and political scientists) became experts on poverty and “social management”. Among the pioneers in this effort were representatives of Marxist sociology and even the cátedras nacionales who, abandoning their radical stances of the past, discovered public policy to be a profitable area of inquiry and intervention (even in the context of a neoliberal and conservative government with which they disagreed). Affluence, which included funds to do ambitious quantitative research on a national scale, as well as much bigger salaries than those within the professoriate, allowed for the invitation of international scholars in the area (like Robert Castel, Alejandro Portes, and Julien Legrand) to different seminars (Vommaro 2011). Consulting companies along with some multinationals (like Unilever, Coca Cola, and McDonald’s) were also significant recruiters, especially in market research (and to a lesser extent, human resources). Here again, methodological expertise was important, and fresh graduates were hired to do applied research on consumers, an activity that boomed in the 1990s as economic modernization and globalization led bigger firms to devote more resources to better understand local markets. As quantitative but also qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, and later ethnographic observation) were needed, a multiplication of consulting agencies (both multinational and national) followed. Also, opinion and voter polls were other important area for sociologists, although resources were smaller, as the budgets of politicians were not as ample as those of private companies. Some of them, as was seen in Chap. 5, made regular appearances in the media and worked as influential collaborators of political parties (Vommaro 2008). As with social policy, the conduct of big surveys, as much as economic income (at least for those who managed to climb the professional ladder up), contrasted with academic austerity. Finally, although in general they offered free-lance and part-time jobs, NGOs were another important recruiter. These institutions also multiplied in the wake of the retreat of the state, which outsourced many services to the (allegedly more efficient) third sector. Foreign funding was

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another significant driver in this direction, as the market of international philanthropy expanded. Ford Foundation, for example, without abandoning their support of certain academic endeavors, channeled many of its resources to a focus on applied initiatives in such causes as human rights, social betterment, accountable government, access to justice, and reproductive health (Berger and Blugerman 2017). To take advantage of the new funding situation, NGOs also became more “professionalized” and, responding to the demands of their donors, engaged in systematic diagnosis and impact assessment of their actions, paving the way for the hiring of sociologists. Confronted with this changing professional scene, sociology undergraduate programs remained in general terms indifferent. This was especially the case with UBA, where there was a persistent disinterest in the work experiences of most of its graduates, as well as of a good proportion of its own teaching staff, who devoted most of their time to work outside academia. As full-time appointments were limited, there were many teachers who had to support themselves with consulting activities, but did not talk much about their professional activities in their classes. And not without a reason. They felt that those experiences would not thrill most of the students and might even cause negative reactions from the most radical ones. The situation was particularly striking in methodology courses where there were professors who, despite making a living with market research, elaborated on research techniques without highlighting their potential non-academic uses. Although the day after graduation was a source of concern for senior students, traditional disdain for applied sociology prevailed, as the belligerency of the students who were attracted to sociology did not wane with the years.4 It was the working consensus that the discipline should defend its “intellectual autonomy” and avoid any “instrumentalization” based on “market needs” (Rubinich and Langieri 2007). As a result, most available professional options were  To give just one of many possible examples, in 2002, while Argentina was undergoing one of its major crises and protests were constant, sociology students were not unaffected and occupied the building of the UBA’s rector for almost two months. The conflict, which reached the media, revolved around the mechanism by which the authorities of the program were elected. With a call for “democratization”, the students tried to replace the existing system of indirect elections and weighted voting (which favored the professoriate) by direct elections and the principle of “one student one vote; one professor one vote”. 4

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looked down on, except for teaching or research within academia. No wonder that in 1995 a senior student cleverly depicted graduates’ future as a choice between the “monastic priesthood” offered by academia and the “prostitution” offered by private companies and “the capitalist state” (Yellati 1995). As a consequence, many of those graduates who ended up working outside of academia experienced a “vocational” or “personal crisis”, derived from the distance between the ideal of sociologists to which they were exposed and their actual professional destiny. Doubtless, the neglect of applied uses of the discipline is not an exclusive feature of Argentinean sociology. But what is remarkable in this case was that this neglect took place in a program in which open enrollment resulted in a flow of graduates which could hardly be absorbed by the academic job market and, what is more, in one in which a good share of the teaching staff worked outside academia. The social background of the students, which in general came from the middle classes (and were not therefore eager to know how the program would improve their professional chances; Bonaldi 2009), and especially the lack of tuition costs and fees, were major reasons for this.5 The influence exerted by some small and marginal Marxist parties, which found at parts of the Faculty of Social Science’s student body one of the few welcoming audiences they had, was an additional element supporting the rejection of a more vocational program.6 And yet, as it was possible to see on a comprehensive study of sociologists’ professional practices, it did not take long for graduates working outside the academia to find symbolic value in their work (Blois 2012). In effect, although they were frequently limited in the time they had to do research, and their topics as well as goals were not always enriching or edifying, they came to value the work they carried out and saw themselves as avoiding many of the (alleged) bad habits they saw in their academic peers. On the one hand, they called attention to their growing and  In Chile, for example, where education is quite expensive and students must take out large loans to go to college, sociological programs usually take great pains to explain job prospects for possible students. 6  It should be mentioned, though, that in the last years some undergraduate programs, like that at the University of Cuyo or the one at the University of San Martin, are trying to pay more attention to non-academic tasks. 5

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deleterious self-referentiality, which took those colleagues to neglect social intervention and conduct their lives, as one interviewee working for an NGO stated, on a “shuttered world with no other than a handful of colleagues”. Against this trend and “ivory-tower attitudes”, these consultant sociologists tended to emphasize the close relations they had with relevant actors and “decision-makers” and, what is more, the “concrete” nature and effects of their work. A head of the market research department of a famous soft drink brand was quite clear about this: “As for academic research? No, that isn’t really me… Doing research without a reason why […] I’d feel sort of like I was producing ‘air’ […] In fact, a friend of mine who finished her doctorate suffered a ‘crisis of abstraction’”. On the other hand, mirroring the view of the older generations within the professoriate, these sociologists were quite critical of most recent academic professionalization and what they saw as academic’s individualism and careerism which had converted the academic field in “a factory of papers”, which only served the interests of those wanting to make a name among their colleagues. Such an orientation, a former market researcher stressed, was clear in their choice of topics which were devoid of any social relevance: In many cases, there seems to be a lack of political commitment to what gets done with the research that is carried out […] From my point of view, relevance approaches zero, close to nil as they study topics like the electronic music of the 1980s and its relationship to rap dancing in the following decade. Things like that […] For me, research is for a reason, not to publish a good paper… At some point I must do something, something that has an impact on my immediate reality.

A colleague who worked at a statistical state office was no less critical: There are private research institutes that have spent decades talking about teenage pregnancy. But what were they really doing for teenage pregnancy? Nothing more than speaking to their own world, within their own field, without any kind of impact! […] If you have any idea of making any practical application […] you are considered naïve: Don’t waste time, focus on your PhD.

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In this context, the different types of interventions allowed by applied sociology, despite their focus on client’s needs and limits to “intellectual autonomy”, were vindicated as valuable contributions to society. Brandished against academic practice, this vindication not only reconciled these practitioners to their professional destiny but also enrolled them in a movement that tried to subvert the dominant hierarchies of the sociological field upheld by the professoriate. What is interesting, though, was that, far from neglecting the core values and images associated with the discipline transmitted during university socialization (such as the defense of a critical stance and the concern for social reform), they appropriated and reshaped them in order to defend their work and their status as “legitimate sociologists”. But as the undergraduate programs did not encourage exchanges and the CPS remained weak and unknown to most practitioners, there were no institutional settings that might foster dialogue within those working in the academia and beyond it. Instead, there was a trend toward compartmentalization, and interdependence, as defended by Burawoy (2005), which might have strengthened the discipline as a whole, was diminished.

References Baranger, Denis. 2020. Los caminos de Bourdieu en Argentina. Repocs 17 (34): 271–298. Beigel, Fernanda, and Fabiana Bekerman. 2019. ¿Qué Significa Categorizar? In Culturas Evaluativas Impactos y Dilemas Del Programa de Incentivos a Docentes-­ Investigadores En Argentina (1993–2018), ed. Fernanda Beigel y Fabiana Bekerman 17–40. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Beigel, Fernanda, Fabiana Bekerman, and Osvaldo Gallardo. 2018. Institutional Expansion and Scientific Development in the Periphery: The Structural Heterogeneity of Argentina’s Academic Field. Minerva 56 (3): 305–331. Beigel, Fernanda, and Maximiliano Salatino. 2015. Circuitos segmentados de consagración académica: las revistas de ciencias sociales y humanas en la Argentina. Información, Cultura y Sociedad (32): 7–31. https://doi. org/10.34096/ics.i32.1342

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Beigel, Fernanda, and Gustavo Sorá. 2019. Arduous Institutionalization in Argentina’s SSH: Expansion, Asymmetries and Segmented Circuits of Recognition. In Shaping Human Science Disciplines. Institutional Developments in Europe and Beyond, ed. Christian Fleck, Matthias Dullera and Victor Karády, 327–360. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Benzecry, Claudio, and Mariana Heredia. 2017. Sociology in Argentina. Contemporary Sociology 46 (1): 10–17. Berger, Gabriel, and Leopoldo Blugerman. 2017. La Fundación Ford en la Argentina. Cinco décadas de inversión social privada al servicio del desarrollo y de la protección y ampliación de los derechos humanos. Victoria: UDESA. Bio, Demian. 2018. Macri Hopes Argentina ‘Will Have a Crush’ on Christine Lagarde After IMF Deal. TheBubble, September 25. Blanco, Alejandro, and Ariel Wilkis. 2018. The Internationalization of Sociology in Argentina 1985–2015: Geographies and Trends. In The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations, ed. Johan Heilbron, Gustavo Sorá, and Thibaud Boncourt, 215–241. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Blois, Juan Pedro. 2012. Obligados a elegir “entre el sacerdocio y la prostitución”. Socialización universitaria y prácticas profesionales de los sociólogos de la UBA.  Doctoral Dissertation, Faculty of Social Science, University of Buenos Aires. Bonaldi, Pablo. 2009. Aprendiendo sociología. La impronta de la Carrera en la experiencia de los estudiantes. Buenos Aires: La gomera. Burawoy, Michael. 2005. For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review 70 (1): 4–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240507000102. Caletti, Sergio. 2003. La punta y el ovillo. Sociedad (22): 272–276. Calvo, Ernesto, Sofía Elverdín, Gabriel Kessler, and M. Victoria Murillo. 2020. Investigando las influencias internacionales en las ciencias sociales argentinas. Revista Latinoamericana de Metodología de Las Ciencias Sociales 9 (2). https:// doi.org/10.24215/18537863e055. Hanafi, Sari. 2011. University Systems in the Arab East: Publish Globally and Perish Locally vs Publish Locally and Perish Globally. Current Sociology 59 (3): 291–309. IIGG. 2020. El Instituto en números. http://iigg.sociales.uba.ar/estadisticas-­2/. Jolly, Richard. 1991. Adjustment with a Human Face: A UNICEF Record and Perspective on the 1980s. World Development 19 (12): 1807–1821. Levitsky, Steven, and Kenneth Roberts. 2011. The Resurgence of the Latin American Left. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lorca, Javier. 2007. O corrés detrás de los subsidios o te hacés preguntas críticas. Página12, March 27.

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McGann, James. 2020. 2019 Global Go to Think Tank Index Report. Merklen, Denis. 2005. Pobres ciudadanos. Las clases populares en la era democrática (1983–2003). Buenos Aires: Gorla. Piovani, Juan Ignacio. 2017. Argentina under Scrutiny. Global Dialogue 7 (4). https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/argentina-under-scrutiny/. ———. 2018. Estilos de producción en el campo de las ciencias sociales en Argentina. Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación 23: 125–141. Portantiero, Juan Carlos. 2005. Lic. Portantiero. In Crisis de las ciencias sociales de la Argentina en crisis, 17–26. Prometeo: Buenos Aires. Rubinich, Lucas, and Gastón Beltrán, eds. 2010. Qué hacen los sociólogos? Buenos Aires: Aurelia. Rubinich, Lucas, and Marcelo Langieri. 2007. Prólogo. La Sociología ahora. In La Sociología ahora, 9–50. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. SCEU. 2020. Sistema de Consulta de Estadísticas Universitarias. Secretaría de Políticas Universitarias. http://estadisticasuniversitarias.me.gov.ar/#/ seccion/1. Slipczuk, Martín. 2020. Conicet: los salarios de los investigadores son los más bajos en más de 15 años. Chequeado, August 21. Sorá, Gustavo, and Alejandro Dujovne. 2018. Translating Western Social and Human Sciences in Argentina: A Comparative Study of Translations from French, English, German, Italian and Portuguese. In The Social and Human Sciences in Global Power Relations, ed. Johan Heilbron, Gustavo Sorá, and Thiboud Boncourt, 267–293. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Svampa, Maristella, ed. 2000. Desde abajo. La transformación de las identidades sociales. Buenos Aires: Biblos-UNGS. ———. 2008. Cambio de Época. Movimientos sociales y poder político. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Vommaro, Gabriel. 2008. “Lo que quiere la gente”. Los sondeos de opinión y el espacio de la comunicación política en Argentina (1983–1999). Buenos Aires: Prometeo-UNGS. ———. 2011. La pobreza y los pobres como dominio experto: Contribuciones a una socio-historia. In Saber Lo Que Se Hace. Expertos y Política En Argentina, ed. Sergio Morresi and Gabriel Vommaro 79–134. Buenos Aires: Prometeo-UNGS. Yellati, Carolina. 1995. La sociología: entre el sacerdocio y la prostitución. El Ojo Furioso, 1.

7 Concluding Remarks: The Specter of Sisyphus

Abstract  These concluding remarks reflect on the long-term trends affecting sociology in Argentina in light of the present situation. First, it provides an examination of the relationship that sociologists preserved with activism, politics, and the state, as well as the institutionalizing/de-­ institutionalizing dynamics that followed. Second, it focuses on the interactions that sociologists established with local and alien intellectual traditions, and the dilemmas and constraints put forward by doing sociology from the periphery. Third, it turns to the controversies around applied sociology and the (enduring) quandaries that working for a client produced among sociologists and students. Finally, the uncertain future, one in which growing difficulties are being fueled by economic crises, political polarization, and a rising post-truth atmosphere, is weighed against the Sisyphean past of the discipline. Keywords  Politicization • Institutionalization/de-institutionalization • Intellectual peripherality • Applied sociology • Sisyphus

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6_7

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Politicization, Institutionalization, De-institutionalization Sociology in Argentina was not protected from local persistent, cyclical, and at times astonishing, political, and economic instability. That is why throughout this book political turns (and swerves) were highlighted as a crucial context with which most of the chapters were started. From mid-­1950s to mid-1980s, this dynamic was such that, whether they wanted or not, the different factions within the discipline were endowed with a clear political flavor. Thus, while Germani and his collaborators were quite emphatic about their “objectivity” and “value neutrality”, their rise had actually been inseparable of the coup which in 1955 ousted Perón and the self-described “democratic” ideological cleansing that followed within UBA and other institutions. Although it is true that intellectual differences with the sociólogos de cátedra were sharp, their identification with the former government was crucial to their displacement. This gave “scientific sociology” an unmistakable anti-Peronist resonance. But politics was not just a simple “intruder” coming from the “outside” to affect an “inner” logic of an-otherwise-autonomous “field”. New factions within the discipline, attuned with the international rise of critical sociology in the 1960s, embraced advocacy, while rejecting any self-­ alleged “objectivity” as inherently conservative. As in the rest of the intellectual field, political divides became significant classificatory criteria among sociologists. Moreover, as enrollments skyrocketed, students became an influential and active audience in universities. They were crucial in forcing “scientific sociology” into reclusion, moving it to private research institutes, a process which started well before the coup of 1966. Students were also central instigators in the increasing wave of activism and straightforward ideologization which characterized “Marxist sociologists” and, in a particularly extreme way, the cátedras nacionales. In this context of student dominance, sociology became partisan, and debates between its different factions, when they took place, were bitter. Students provided radical factions with a broad audience within universities which extended to neighboring intellectual activist circles. But the explicit

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neglect of the ideas of “science” and “profession” as protective borders from straightforward politics would not go without consequences. When, in the mid-1970s, the military and civilian elites set out to brutally restore order, sociology, which they identified with “subversion”, was one of the main targets within academic institutions. Had not been for the private research institutes, in which an “enclave” and low-profile sociology was fostered, little would have remained of the renewal of the discipline that started in the 1950s. The discipline was severely de-institutionalized as many programs were closed and many sociologists, among other social scientists and intellectuals, were fiercely persecuted. The definite reestablishment of democracy in 1983 paved the way for an unprecedented cumulative development of academic institutions. From that moment on, in contrast to the past, shifts in governments were not followed by changes within the professoriate. Academic professionalization, especially from the 1990s, made unprecedented progress as undergraduate and graduate programs multiplied. Meanwhile, full-time academic appointments, traditionally few in number, were significantly expanded. However, at the same time, the discipline became greatly dependent on state budgets, which fueled its main institutional bases— public universities and the CONICET—with the consequence that sociologists’ opportunities to do academic research and teach were subject to local pendular and significantly erratic fluctuations in state money. It was not uncommon for supposedly “full-time” professors to supplement their income with other jobs, and funding for research remained scarce and encouraged a qualitative bent. Yet, progress was clear, and sociology finally became a full-fledged academic discipline, with much more autonomy and specialization. If, as some critical observers pointed out, self-­ referentiality was strengthened by this, sociologists did not simply retreat in their academic compartments. Far from it. Although their success was uneven, many tried to share the results of their research with non-­ specialist audiences and the press. Their public interventions, though, were no longer those of the “generalist” and straightforward politicized public intellectual or activist as in the past, but were one based on more “specific” expertise. As elsewhere, without the support of former grand narratives, such as “modernization theory”, “Marxism”, or “national

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liberation”, sociologists became less assertive and grandiloquent (and maybe less appealing to the public). More recently, the election of a neoliberal government in 2015, which cut funding on academic public institutions and greatly eroded salaries, reminded sociologists, as well as the rest of the scientific community, of the fragile nature of their institutions, and more disturbingly, of their dependence on the (changing) voting preferences of their fellow citizens. Once more, the image of a “southern Sisyphus”, which had been invoked thirty years ago to think of Argentine social science’s troubled institutionalization (Vessuri 1990), was in the air. Cuts were accompanied with intense campaigns in the press and social media against the social and human sciences and their allegedly “useless” nature. Many sociologists, along with other scientists, responded with active protests against the government. Whether they wanted to be or not, sociologists were compelled to take sides, as political polarization strengthened—between forces defending state-oriented policies and forces advancing a neoliberal agenda which, if successful, would undermine the discipline’s academic resource base (more below).

 oing Sociology from the Periphery: The Place D of Local Intellectual Traditions Although recognized as a central reference for Latin American scholars, Argentinean sociology was (and is) peripheral in global terms. Local sociologists have been subject to a perennial tension between encouraging greater openness toward the production of the most advanced centers— namely, Europe (especially France) and the United States—or promoting a more “national” or Latin American kind of “autonomous”, approach. Of course, tensions like this were not exclusive to sociology and affected all intellectual endeavors within the country. As Benzecry and Heredia (2017) have recently recalled, Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina’s most famous writer, called attention to the fact that, given Argentina’s equal distance to the different metropolitan centers, local literature was granted the opportunity to combine different Western traditions without having to

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choose one over the other. Drawing on this insight, these sociologists depicted Argentina’s geopolitical position in positive terms. According to their view, this position has encouraged intellectual creativity, even “theoretical innovation from the periphery”, as it allowed for the amalgamation of a set of foreign authors and ideas which, in their original context of production, did not usually go together. Blending was ample (and sort of heretical): Latour with Bourdieu, Garfinkel with Leffort, Callon with Laclau, and so on. “This mixture [they contended] results in an original theoretical synthesis and a resistance to turn the study of Argentina into merely a case for the application of one imported analytic protocol” (Benzecry and Heredia 2017, p. 14). If insightful, this line of thinking is quite revealing in that it takes for granted the fact that, when searching for theoretical and methodological inspiration, most Argentinean sociologists looked abroad and, more specifically, at the so-called global north, while at the same time ignoring local intellectual traditions. Of course, this is not a feature exclusive to Argentina, as scholarship on academic and intellectual dependency in different countries has abundantly shown. But as the discussion of the contrast with Brazilian sociology provided in Chaps. 2 and 3 attempted to convey, Brazilian sociologists, though sharing a similar peripheral position, were much more willing to seek inspiration from national intellectual traditions, especially as represented by local essayists. And this has remained a quite vigorous habit to the present: undergraduate programs devote significant attention to essayists and former generations of sociologists (Gilberto Freyre and Florestan Fernandes being the stars), and so-called Brazilian social thought is a well-entrenched research area that has attracted more and more attention among sociologists. In some cases, scholars embraced the study of that corpus as a source for new ideas with which to question and reshape theories coming from the global north. In contrast, in Argentina it is not unlikely that undergraduate students might finish their studies without having read such towering intellectual figures from the Argentine past as Sarmiento or even Germani.1 What is more, while in Brazil  It is not without some irony that Benzecry and Heredia start their paper on recent Argentinean sociological literature by making reference to two review essays, published in the American Journal of Sociology by Andrew Abbott under the nom de plume “Barbara Celarent”, where he discusses and enthusiastically celebrates Sarmiento and Germani (Celarent 2011, 2013). 1

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sociologists are among the most enthusiastic inquirers into the study of local intellectual traditions, in Argentina the area has been mostly occupied by historians (Botelho 2015). As was seen in Chap. 2, the launching of “scientific sociology” in the 1950s prompted a radical renewal of the discipline by adhering to the canons of the international mainstream. Emphases on empirical research and value neutrality were among the main novelties. At the same time, and quite belligerently, Germani and his collaborators despised local intellectual traditions. The sociólogos de cátedra were neglected as old-­ fashioned and politically biased, but more importantly, local essayists were depicted as short-sighted and impressionistic. Thus, in the eyes of “scientists”, those who by then were the most influential analysts of Argentinean past and present did not have much to offer the “new science”. Far from it. These “scientific” sociologists were convinced that knowledge of national social reality would not come from a dialogue with previous local ideas, but from an accelerated importation of the most “advanced” approaches produced by international—in their view, the US—mainstream scholarship. This positioning did not go unchallenged, and a new generation of sociologists, whose clearest and most fierce incarnation were the cátedras nacionales, denounced “intellectual dependency” and “cultural imperialism”, and claimed that Argentinean society needed its “own” sociology, elaborated “in” and “for” the study of local reality. And for this enterprise to be accomplished, the essayistic tradition and its politically engaged style were identified as the main sources (along with straightforward political works by worldwide famous politicians and revolutionaries). This tradition was not promoted with the idea of integrating its insights to the latest developments in international mainstream sociology. On the contrary, the advocates of a “national sociology” rejected “science” and empirical research, which they assimilated to conservatism and a deleterious “scientificism”. The rift among these factions was not without material causes, and there were clear constraints on both sides. Germani and his followers were funded by the US foundations which promoted the “modernization” of local scholarship (meaning the importation of

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ideas from abroad). The cátedras nacionales, deprived of those networks, embraced the growing body of politicized students as their main audience. And yet, despite their differences, there was a crucial tacit agreement: both, “cosmopolitans” and “nationalists”, tended to see empirically based and internationally connected sociology as a body of knowledge different from and opposed to essayism and “national sociology”. In effect, more than questioning the terms of the divide drawn by Germani and his collaborators, the cátedras nacionales embraced and strengthened it, while inverting their respective values. This opposition proved enduring and remained as a lasting principle of vision and division among Argentinean sociologists. Indeed, as was mentioned in Chaps. 5 and 6, the process of academic professionalization that started in the 1990s was followed by bitter reaction. Some of those who could not (or did not want to) join the new wave vindicated essayism and the study of local intellectual traditions as an alternative and richer intellectual avenue than professional and internationalized sociology. Like their ancestors, they neglected empirical systematic research and questioned value neutrality, and defended the production of essays as “freer” and more critical than what they termed the “oppressive paper” (Torres and Gonnet 2018). Correlatively, and partially as a reaction to this, those who encouraged the new professional standards tended to ignore local intellectual traditions and trust more in the importation (and local empirical adjustment) of the main theoretical ideas they mobilized in their studies. It is an open question whether scholarship on academic dependence as has recently developed in Argentina and elsewhere (Beigel 2013) will result in greater appreciation of local scholarship and a more autonomous and audacious indigenous (and at the same time internationally connected) theoretical agenda. Perhaps it is worth reminding that while Borges was the most cosmopolitan and polyglot Argentinean writer in history (he spent long seasons in Europe and excelled in English, French, and was able to read—and translate—from German), he was also a careful student of national(istic) literature and made significant forays into such topics as the “language of the Argentineans”, the tango, and the gaucho.

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 nduring Tensions Around Sociology E as a Consulting Profession In 2012, a group of academic sociologists organized a conference that gathered colleagues working in and outside academia with the idea of fostering dialogue and mutual knowledge. One of the guests was a quite well-known opinion pollster, an associate of a very important local consultant agency, an influential political advisor, and a regular columnist in one of the most important national newspapers. This sociologist had also been a teacher at the UBA program for more than twenty-five years, a post from which he had recently retired. When someone in the public asked him how he would depict the relationship between his different professional activities—consultantship and teaching—he was quite straightforward. He contended, in metaphorical language, that those tasks had remained poorly articulated by “joints which suffered from arthritis”. The answer was not surprising for an audience who knew that all his teaching career had been devoted to lectures on Weber and never systematically touched on his other professional practice. Doubtless, the story is particularly telling about the uneasy relation between sociologists and the non-academic job market that prevailed in Argentina, the relations on which this book tried to shed some light. As was seen in Chap. 2, the launching of the first undergraduate programs was conducted under the idea that future sociologists would be able to work not only in academia but also as consultant professionals in the service of a wide range of potential clienteles. Enthusiasm about “applied sociology” was such that there were some important sociologists that went so far as to claim that it was this connection with extended clienteles that could nurture actual Kuhnian “scientific revolutions”, as had been the case in the past with Psychoanalysis, Keynesianism, and Marxism. However, despite their optimism, attempts to promote applied sociology foundered for the lack of (good and appealing) jobs. Although sociologists were hired by some state agencies, difficulties proved persistent, and during the 1960s and 1970s, a degree in sociology was increasingly seen as a passport to an unrelated-to-the-discipline job. While this was quite disappointing for those who dreamed of “scientific

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revolutions”, it was not bad news for those factions who advocated politicization, for whom applied sociology amounted to an ineluctable instrumentalization of the discipline in favor of the elites and the Capitalist state. In that context, a tough job market, far from generating concern and pessimism, was for them an ideal breeding ground for revolt. These views were not misguided: while students became more and more politicized, an extended disdain for applied sociology became a commonplace among the sociological field. While there were some attempts to challenge this view, and a professional organization was launched in 1975, suspicions of applied sociology proved enduring. And this persisted when opportunities were greatly multiplied from the 1990s onward. Thus, as young graduates started to be recruited in different institutions within state agencies, the corporate world, and the third sector, students’ activism, which mirrored that of the past, deterred any reorientation among the undergraduate programs or a reappraisal of consultantship. This was particularly striking at the UBA where although most of the teachers, as the opinion pollster referred above, were part-­ time, the strong tradition of neglect of non-academic sociological work went unchallenged. While some have celebrated this as a defense of “intellectual autonomy” and preservation from a deleterious instrumentalization of the discipline in favor of fleeting job market needs, the price was high. It alienated the program from the rich experience of most of their graduates and staff beyond academia. In his famous call for “public sociology” at his presidential address at the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2004, Burawoy defended the intense interdependence between different sociological activities as a source of greater “energy, meaning and imagination”. Further exchange, he stressed, might prevent harmful “pathologies” from affecting the different activities, pathologies which were caused by the specific institutional constraints these activities faced: “self-referentiality” in the case of academia and “servility” in the case of applied (or policy) sociology (Burawoy 2005). It is an open question though whether attempts to overcome the traditional neglect of applied sociology, which are taking place in some universities in Argentina, will improve “synergy” and provide mutual benefits, without risking intellectual autonomy. What seems certain is that in a context in which most of the graduates do not climb the

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academic ladder, more reflection on the matter is in order. What is also certain is that the choice between “monastic priesthood” and “prostitution”, as referred in Chap. 6, is far from being an appealing dilemma.

Sisyphus Reloaded? At the end of 2019, a new Peronist president took office. Once more, a new administration was appointed in the context of a severe economic crisis which seemed to put the country on the verge of great distress. Once more, the new president proposed a 180-degree turn. But on this occasion, a generous pro-science policy was promised, one which could enable recovery from the damage caused by the previous neoliberal government. Alberto Fernández, the new president, went so far as to contend, in his first speech to the Congress, that his would be a “government of scientists”, and not one of CEOs, as his predecessor’s had been. Indeed, many social scientists were recruited to high-ranking posts, the most visible being in the Ministry of Security, to which a renowned woman anthropologist was appointed at its head. Moreover, Fernández emphatically defended public universities as crucial actors in development and social betterment. Not surprisingly, a renewed optimism among the academic community became widespread, and a quick and general recovery of funding was expected. However, after giving a significant raise in doctoral fellowships, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic changed priorities, and as a consequence, salaries continued on their way down, getting closer to the poverty threshold. Needless to say, future seems pretty uncertain in Argentina. The economy is breaking the records of previous declines (even though they are hard records to break). Also, as elsewhere, controversies surrounding the lockdown and a rising post-truth atmosphere are fueling political polarization. In this context, the public alignment of the scientific community and academic sociologists with one of the sides—the one defending state-­ oriented policies—appears as an act of self-defense because local science is mostly dependent on state funding. However, this alliance might turn out to be quite problematic if a change in the political situation follows.

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New negative campaigns against the social and human sciences animated by insidious internet trolls, and echoed in the general press, are far from unthinkable. Yet, while there are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic about local sociology’s future, two elements allow for a certain optimism. On the one hand, the significant growth started in the 1990s and further developed in the 2000s resulted in the discipline’s significant entrenchment within academic institutions and beyond them (although without the exclusive jurisdictions that more traditional consulting professions have). On the other hand, given its troubled and zigzagging trajectory, Argentinean sociologists seem to be well-equipped to meet the new challenges: a considerable “crisis management” expertise will be available. This is an odd advantage of a history haunted by the specter of Sisyphus.

References Beigel, Fernanda. 2013. Introduction: The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. In The Politics of Academic Autonomy in Latin America. Ed. Fernanda Beigel. Farnham: Ashgate. Benzecry, Claudio, and Mariana Heredia. 2017. Sociology in Argentina. Contemporary Sociology 46 (1): 10–17. Botelho, André. 2015. Un programa fuerte para el pensamiento social brasileño. Prismas 19: 151–161. Burawoy, Michael. 2005. For Public Sociology. American Sociological Review 70 (1): 4–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240507000102. Celarent, Barbara [Andrew Abbott]. 2011. Review of Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. American Journal of Sociology 117 (2): 716–723. ———. 2013. Review of Authoritarianism, Fascism, and National Populism by Gino Germani. American Journal of Sociology 119 (2): 590–596. Torres, Estebán, and Juan Pablo Gonnet. 2018. El intelectual de la cultura y la sociología en la Argentina. Un análisis a partir del caso de Horacio González. Pilquen 21 (1): 1–13. Vessuri, Hebe. 1990. El Sísifo sureño: las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Quipu 7 (2): 149–185.

Index1

A

D

Academic dependency, see Transnational influence Activism, see Politicization Applied sociology, 21, 31, 57, 60, 84–86, 96, 100, 130, 131, 133, 135, 146, 147 controversies, 51–57, 133

de Ímaz, José Luis, 30, 33n9, 62, 76 de Ípola, Emilio, 103–105, 105n7, 106n8, 107, 108 Di Tella, Torcuato, 58, 85, 86 E

B

Brazil, 7, 32, 32n8, 37, 64, 75n5, 78n11, 83n17, 123, 126, 127n3, 143

Enclave sociology, 77–83 Essayists, 34–38, 62, 64, 109, 141, 143, 144 G

C

Carri, Roberto, 48, 48n3, 50, 53, 54, 59, 60, 63, 72

Germani, Gino, 4, 30, 46n2, 48, 57, 58, 61, 62, 85, 94, 101–103, 109, 122, 140, 143–145, 143n1

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. P. Blois, Sociology in Argentina, Sociology Transformed, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63520-6

151

152 Index

González, Horacio, 109, 129 Graduate studies, , 120, 11, 13, 77, 116, 117, 119

O

O’Donnell, Guillermo, 79 P

I

International philanthropy, 29, 33, 81, 132, 144 Camelot Project, 54 controversies on, 101 Ford Foundation, 27, 40, 53, 56, 78–80, 104, 132 Rockefeller Foundation, 27, 40, 78 J

Jauretche, Arturo, 62 L

Levene, Ricardo, 20–22, 25 M

Marginality Project, 53, 54, 63, 103 Marginal mass, 56, 57 Marxist sociology, 94, 102 Murmis, Miguel, 103 N

National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET), 12, 13, 93, 95, 116, 117, 119, 121, 123–128, 141 National intellectual traditions, see Essayists Nun, José, 53–57, 54n11, 63, 103–106

Peronism, 24, 24n3, 26, 27, 49, 49n4, 50, 55, 62, 76, 76n7, 100, 103, 107, 114, 115 Policy sociology, see Applied sociology Political Science, 94, 95, 99, 118, 121 Politicization, 39, 47, 50, 56, 60, 86, 97, 98, 100, 103, 108, 129, 140, 147 cátedras nacionales (national chairs), 47–53, 59, 63, 64, 72, 73, 100, 109, 129, 140, 144, 145 Marxist sociology, 51–57, 59, 82n15 sociologists as activists, 105, 128, 141 sociologists as public intellectuals, 104, 123, 128, 141 (see also Students) Portantiero, Juan Carlos, 50n6, 103–109, 105n7, 106n8, 124 Poviña, Alfredo, 34 Private research institutes, 82n16, 101, 140 Center for Population Studies (CENEP), 77, 80, 81, 97n3 Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES), 77, 79, 80, 81n13, 82, 83 Latin American Center for the Analysis of Democracy (CLADE), 103, 104

 Index 

Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), 28, 28n6, 58, 79, 80, 82n15 Torcuato Di Tella Institute (ITDT), 40, 77, 77n8, 77n9, 78, 80n12 Professionalization academic, 103, 114–135, 141, 145 consulting, 5, 31, 57–61, 85, 98, 146–148 (see also Applied sociology) organizations Argentinean Sociological Association (ASA), 34 Argentinean Sociological Society (SAS), 34 Association of Graduates of Sociology (CGS), 84–86, 96–98 Socialist Culture Club (CCS), 105 Sociological Professional Council (CPS), 98, 130, 135 Psychology, 24, 26, 38, 73 Punto de Vista (review), 106, 107

S

Q

U

Qualitative methodology, 122, 131 Quantitative methodology, 29, 73n1, 122, 125, 130, 131 R

Revista Latinoamericana de Sociología (journal), 40, 52, 56n13, 63

153

Scientific sociology, 23, 29–31, 33, 35–38, 40, 46, 46n2, 49, 51, 61–64, 72, 76, 77, 94, 96, 100, 102, 105, 109, 120, 129, 140, 144 Sociólogos de cátedra [arm-chair sociology], 26, 34, 140, 144 Students, 8, 9, 11, 13n4, 24, 27, 29, 30, 38–41, 39n13, 46, 50–52, 50n5, 55, 60, 61, 64, 71–73, 92, 95–98, 100, 101, 106, 106n8, 116–118, 121, 128, 132, 132n4, 140, 145, 147 enrolment, 39, 49, 76, 93, 95, 118 T

Tecera del Franco, Rodolfo, 22, 76, 76n7 Torrado, Susana, 94, 95 Transnational influence, 7, 145 France, 7, 28, 61, 127, 127n3, 142 Germany, 7, 21 Latin America, 7, 109, 124, 127 United States, 7, 26, 28, 37, 61, 127, 127n3, 142, 144 See also Enclave sociology

UNESCO, 27, 28n6, 29, 40 University of Buenos Aires (UBA), 8, 10–13, 13n4, 20, 24, 24n3, 30, 33, 39, 41, 46, 51, 57, 71–77, 80, 93–101, 95n1, 103, 116, 119, 120n1, 121, 123, 126, 132n4, 140, 146 Department of Sociology, 27, 28 Eudeba (printing house), 30, 30n7

154 Index

University of Buenos Aires (UBA) (cont.) Institute, 29 Institute of Sociology, 20, 27, 75, 120, 120n1 Sociology Program, 72, 74, 82, 82n16, 94, 98, 99, 106n8, 108, 118, 120, 129, 132, 133, 147

V

Verón, Eliseo, 46n2, 52, 55n12, 59 W

Wainerman, Catalina, 81, 97–98n3